Auden and Isherwood

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Prologue: Looking for Berlin

   • Norman Page

   Pages 1-5

3. Two Young Englishmen

   • Norman Page

   Pages 6-60

4. Berlin: Places

   • Norman Page

   Pages 61-99

5. Berlin: Faces

   • Norman Page

   Pages 100-145

6. The Other Camera — Aspects of Weimar Cinema

   • Norman Page

   Pages 146-172

7. Writing about Berlin

   • Norman Page

   Pages 173-209

8. Epilogue: Goodbye to Berlin

   • Norman Page

   Pages 210-212

9. Back Matter

   Pages 213-220

   PDF

Drawing on much contemporary material, including Auden's fascinating unpublished diary, this book places personal experience in the context of the life of a great city: not only its political, artistic and cultural life, but the life of the streets, bars and caf� It presents portraits of figures, often fascinating in their own right, with whom Auden and Isherwood came into contact, and it demonstrates how, especially in Isherwood's fiction, the raw material of daily existence was transformed into art. The wide scope of this study, which ranges from poetry and cinema to street violence and prostitution, provides a richly detailed context for its account of two writers engaged in the process of self-definition.

• fiction
• poetry
• Prostitution

Norman Page's aims in writing this book were, as I believe, modest but very worthwhile. He intended to add to the store of information about this German chapter in British literary history. He intended that the information should be accurate, and purged of romantic and self-serving myths. Most importantly, he wanted to convience his readers that the Berlin years were artistically formative in the careers of two (and possibly three) major British writers. If these were his intentions Page has succeeded, and the proof will be the essential place which Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years will occupy on our shelves.' - John Sutherland The Cambridge Quarterly

'Although quite short, the book is wide-ranging, taking in topography, biography, political and social history, and literary criticism...always stimulating and informative, enlivened by humour and some nice touches of asperity'. - Peter Parker, Times Literary Supplement

'Entertaining and insightful reading, highlyrecommended'. - Robert Kelly, Library Journal

NORMAN PAGE is Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham. He has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and has lectured in many parts of the world. His previous biographies include A.E. Housman: A Critical Biography and Tennyson: An Illustrated Life.

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