This volume contains Auden and Christopher Isherwood's dramatic
extravaganzas The Dog Beneath the Skin, the Ascent of F 6, and On the
Frontier. It also includes the two versions of Paid on Both Sides--which
are so different as to constitute two works--and Auden's satiric revue
The Dance of Death. Two plays appear in print for the first time, Auden
and Isherwood's The Enemies of a Bishop and Auden's The Chase. Also
included are Auden's prose and verse written for doucmentary films, a
cabaret sketch, and an unpublished radio script. Many of the texts
include poems by the young Auden that have never been published before.
The extensive historical and textual notes trace the complex history of
the production and revision of these plays, including full texts and
rewritten scenes.
During the years when these works were created, Auden moved from a
"poetry of isolation" to more expansive and public writing. After he
left Oxford at age twenty-one, during the summer of 1928, he wrote the
tragicomic charade Paid on Both Sides. During the next ten years, until
he left England for America, he created the increasingly ambitious works
for stage, film, and broadcast that appear in this volume. The most
important of these plays were written in collaboration with Isherwood.
As the world political situation worsened, Isherwood and Auden's style
combined the energy of popular entertainment with the urgency of
sacramental ritual.
Edard Mendelson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at
Columbia University and the author of Early Auden (Viking). He is the
editor of two volumes of Aduen's poetry, Collected Poems (Random House)
and The English Auden (Random House).
Originally published in 1988.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from
the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions
preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting
them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the
Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich
scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by
Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
