The Dyer's Hand
The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays is a collection of essays and lectures by W. H. Auden, published in 1962 in the US by Random House and in the UK the following year by Faber & Faber.
The book contains a selection of essays, reviews, and collections of aphorisms and notes written by Auden from the early 1950s to 1962. Many items were not previously published, but others appear in revised forms. Many of the essays are revised versions of Auden's lectures as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 1956 to 1961, including his inaugural lecture, "Making, Knowing and Judging".
The book is dedicated to Auden's tutor at Oxford, Nevill Coghill.[1]
Contents
1. Prologue
- "Reading"
- "Writing"
2. The Dyer's Hand
- "Making, Knowing and Judging"
- "The Virgin and the Dynamo"
- "The Poet and the City"
3. The Well of Narcissus
- "Hic et Ille"
- "Balaam and His Ass"
- "The Guilty Vicarage"
- "The I Without a Self"
4. The Shakespearian City
- "The Globe"
- "The Prince's Dog"
- "Interlude: The Wish Game"
- "Brothers & Others"
- "Interlude: West's Disease"
- "The Joker in the Pack"
- "Postscript: Infernal Science"
5. Two Bestiaries
- "D. H. Lawrence"
- "Marianne Moore"
6. Americana
- "The American Scene"
- "Postcript: Rome v. Monticello"
- "Red Ribbon on a White Horse"
- "Postscript: The Almighty Dollar"
- "Robert Frost"
- "American Poetry"
References
- ^ W. H. Auden, The Dyers Hand And Other Essays (1948). Dedication page.
- v
- t
- e
- Poems (1930)
- The Orators (1932)
- On This Island (1936)
- Another Time (1940)
- The Double Man (1941)
- For the Time Being (1944)
- The Age of Anxiety (1947)
- Nones (1951)
- The Shield of Achilles (1955)
- Homage to Clio (1960)
- About the House (1966)
- City Without Walls (1969)
- Academic Graffiti (1971)
- Epistle to a Godson (1972)
- Thank You, Fog (1974)
prose and verse
- Letters from Iceland (1937, with Louis MacNeice)
- Journey to a War (1939, with Christopher Isherwood)
and other books
- The Enchafèd Flood (1950)
- The Dyer's Hand (1962)
- Secondary Worlds (1968)
- A Certain World (1970)
- Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
- "The Orators" (1932)
- "Funeral Blues" (1936)
- "Spain" (1937)
- "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1938)
- "Refugee Blues" (1939)
- "September 1, 1939" (1939)
- "The Unknown Citizen" (1939)
- "Hymn to St. Cecilia" (1940)
- "For the Time Being" (1944)
- "The Sea and the Mirror" (1944)
- "The Age of Anxiety" (1947)
- "In Praise of Limestone" (1948)
- "The Platonic Blow" (1948)
- "Horae Canonicae" (1949–55)
- "Bucolics" (1952–53)
- "The Shield of Achilles" (1955)
- Paid on Both Sides (1928)
- The Dance of Death (1933)
- The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935)
- The Ascent of F6 (1936)
- On the Frontier (1938)
- Play of Daniel (1958)
- Paul Bunyan (1941)
- The Rake's Progress (1951)
- Elegy for Young Lovers (1961)
- The Bassarids (1966)
- Love's Labour's Lost (1973)
- Night Mail (1936)
- George Augustus Auden (father)
- John Bicknell Auden (brother)
- John Auden (first cousin)
- Chester Kallman (companion)