The Enchafed Flood

Author: Auden, W.H

Publisher: Faber & Faber 1951

Description: First edition, first printing

Named after Shakespeare's Othello, this book features Auden's Lectures given at the University of Virginia in 1949. The main works analysed include Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Wreck of the Deutschland, Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the poems of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and the novels of Herman Melville.

Wystan Hugh Auden was a renowned English poet, playwright, critic, and librettist who greatly shaped 20th century poetry. He grappled with moral concerns and infused his work with potent political, social, and psychological undertones. While his early writing was heavily influenced by Marx and Freud, he later turned towards religious and spiritual inspiration. During his time at Oxford, Auden played a central role in the "Oxford Group" or "Auden Generation", along with fellow writers Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice.

Condition: Original turquoise boards with gilt title to spine. Binding remains firm with minor rubbing to extremities. Offsetting to endpapers. Text block is crisp with no foxing or markings. Original jacket aged as expected, largely to spine and inner, with some spotting to front and rubbing to extremities. Minor nicks to spine head and tail. Not price-clipped (10s. 6d. net to the front flap). Otherwise, very well preserved with decoration and text vibrant.

Size: 225 x 150 mm