Stephen Spender

Born in February 28, 1909 / Died in July 16, 1995 / United Kingdom / English

Bibliography

Other info : Career | Furtherreading

POETRY

Nine Experiments: Being Poems Written at the Age of Eighteen,privately printed, 1928.
Twenty Poems,Basil Blackwell (Oxford, England), 1930.
Poems,Faber (London), 1933, Random House (New York, NY), 1934.
Perhaps(limited edition), privately printed, 1933.
Poem(limited edition), privately printed, 1934.
Vienna,Faber, 1934.
At Night,privately printed, 1935.
The Still Centre,Faber, 1939.
Selected Poems,Random House, 1940.
I Sit by the Window,Linden Press (New York, NY), c. 1940.
Ruins and Visions: Poems, 1934-1942,Random House, 1942.
Poems of Dedication,Random House, 1947.
Returning to Vienna, 1947: Nine Sketches,Banyan Press (Chicago), 1947.
The Edge of Being,Random House, 1949.
Sirmione Peninsula,Faber, 1954.
Collected Poems, 1928-1953, Random House, 1955, revised edition published as Collected Poems, 1928-1985,Faber, 1985.
Inscriptions,Poetry Book Society (London), 1958.
Selected Poems,Random House, 1964.
The Generous Days: Ten Poems, David Godine (Boston), 1969, enlarged edition published as The Generous Days,Faber, 1971.
Descartes,Steam Press (London), 1970.
Art Student,Poem-of-the-Month Club (London), 1970.
Recent Poems,Anvil Press Poetry (London), 1978.
Dolphins, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1994.

PLAYS

Trial of a Judge: A Tragedy in Five Acts(first produced in London at Rupert Doone's Group Theatre on March 18, 1938), Random House, 1938.
(Translator and adapter with Goronwy Rees) Danton's Death(first produced in London, 1939; adaptation of a play by Georg Buechner), Faber, 1939.
To the Island,first produced at Oxford University, 1951.
(Adapter) Lulu(adaptation from plays by Frank Wedekind; also see below), produced in New York, 1958.
(Translator and adapter) Mary Stuart(adaptation of a play by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller; produced on the West End at Old Vic, 1961; produced on Broadway at Vivian Beaumont Theatre, November 11, 1971), Faber, 1959, reprinted, Ticknor Fields, 1980.
(Translator and adapter) The Oedipus Trilogy—King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonos, Antigone: A Version by Stephen Spender (three-act play; revision of play produced at Oxford Playhouse, 1983), Faber, 1985.

ESSAYS

The Destructive Element: A Study of Modern Writers and Beliefs,J. Cape (London), 1935, Houghton (Boston), 1936, reprinted, Folcroft (Folcroft, PA), 1970.
Forward from Liberalism,Random House, 1937.
The New Realism: A Discussion,Hogarth (London), 1939, Folcroft, 1977.
Life and the Poet,Secker Warburg (London), 1942, Folcroft, 1974.
European Witness,Reynal, 1946.
(Contributor) Richard H. Crossman, editor, The God That Failed: Six Studies in Communism,Harper, 1950.
Learning Laughter,Weidenfeld Nicolson (London), 1952, Harcourt, 1953.
The Creative Element: A Study of Vision, Despair, and Orthodoxy among Some Modern Writers,Hamish Hamilton (London), 1953, Folcroft, 1973.
The Making of a Poem,Hamish Hamilton, 1955 , Norton, 1962.
The Imagination in the Modern World: Three Lectures,Library of Congress (Washington, DC), 1962.
The Struggle of the Modern,University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1963.
Chaos and Control in Poetry,Library of Congress, 1966.
The Year of the Young Rebels,Random House, 1969.
Love-Hate Relations: A Study of Anglo-American Sensibilities,Random House, 1974.
Eliot, Fontana, 1975, published as T. S. Eliot,Viking, 1976.
Henry Moore: Sculptures in Landscape,Studio Vista (London), 1978, C. N. Potter, 1979.
The Thirties and After: Poetry, Politics, People, 1933-1970,Random House, 1978.
(Contributor) America Observed,C. N. Potter, 1979.
(With David Hockney) China Diary(travel guide), with illustrations by Hockney, Thames Hudson, 1982.
In Irina's Garden with Henry Moore's Sculpture, Thames & Hudson, 1986.

EDITOR

W. H. Auden, Poems,privately printed, 1928.
(With Louis MacNeice) Oxford Poetry 1929,Basil Blackwell, 1929.
(With Bernard Spencer) Oxford Poetry 1930,Basil Blackwell, 1930.
(With John Lehmann and Christopher Isherwood) New Writing, New Series I,Hogarth, 1938.
(With Lehmann and Isherwood) New Writing, New Series II,Hogarth, 1939.
(With Lehmann and author of introduction) Poems for Spain,Hogarth, 1939.
Spiritual Exercises: To Cecil Day Lewis(poems), privately printed, 1943.
(And author of introduction) A Choice of English Romantic Poetry,Dial, 1947.
(And author of introduction) Walt Whitman, Selected Poems,Grey Walls Press (London), 1950.
Martin Huerlimann, Europe in Photographs,Thames Hudson, 1951.
(With Elizabeth Jennings and Dannie Abse) New Poems 1956: An Anthology,M. Joseph (London), 1956.
(And author of introduction) Great Writings of Goethe,New American Library, 1958.
(And author of introduction) Great German Short Stories,Dell, 1960.
(And author of introduction) The Writer's Dilemma,Oxford University Press, 1961.
(With Irving Kristol and Melvin J. Lasky) Encounters: An Anthology from the First Ten Years of "Encounter" Magazine,Basic Books, 1963.
(With Donald Hall) The Concise Encyclopedia of English and American Poets and Poetry,Hawthorn, 1963, revised edition, Hutchinson, 1970.
(And author of introduction) A Choice of Shelley's Verse,Faber, 1971.
(And author of introduction) Selected Poems of Abba Kovne [and] Selected Poems of Nelly Sachs,Penguin, 1971.
The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley,Limited Editions Club (Cambridge), 1971.
D. H. Lawrence: Novelist, Poet, Prophet,Harper, 1973.
W. H. Auden: A Tribute,Macmillan, 1975.
Herbert List: Junge Maenner,Twin Palms, 1988.
Hockney's Alphabet, Random House/American Friends of AIDS Crisis Trust, 1991.

TRANSLATOR

(And author of introduction and, with J. B. Leishman, commentary) Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies(bilingual edition), Norton, 1939, 4th edition, revised, Hogarth, 1963.
(With Hugh Hunt) Ernst Toller, Pastor Hall (three-act play), John Lane, 1939; also bound with Blind Man's Buffby Toller and Denis Johnson, Random House, 1939.
(With J. L. Gili) Federico Garcia Lorca, Poems,Oxford University Press, 1939.
(With Gili) Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca,Hogarth, 1943.
(With Frances Cornford) Paul Eluard, Le Dur desir de Durer,Grey Falcon Press, 1950.
(And author of introduction) Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary (Das Marien-Leben)(bilingual edition), Philosophical Library, 1951.
(With Frances Fawcett) Wedekind, Five Tragedies of Sex,Theatre Arts, 1952.
(With Nikos Stangos) C. P. Cavafy, Fourteen Poems,Editions Electo, 1977.
Wedekind, Lulu Plays and Other Sex Tragedies,Riverrun, 1979.
The Burning Cactus (short stories), Random House, 1936, reprinted, Books for Libraries Press, 1971.

OTHER

The Backward Son(novel), Hogarth, 1940.
(With William Sansom and James Gordon) Jim Braidy: The Story of Britain's Firemen,Lindsay Drummond, 1943.
(Author of introduction and notes) Botticelli,Faber, 1945, Pitman (London), 1948.
(Author of introduction) Patrice de la Tour du Pin, The Dedicated Life in Poetry [and] The Correspondence of Laurent de Cayeux,Harvill Press, 1948.
World within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender,Harcourt, 1951, reprinted with an introduction by the author, St. Martin's, 1994.
Engaged in Writing, and The Fool and the Princess(short stories), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1958.
(With Nicholas Nabokov) Rasputin's End(opera), Ricordi (Milan), 1963.
(Contributor with Patrick Leigh Fermor) Ghika: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture,Lund, Humphries, 1964, Boston Book and Art Shop, 1965.
(Reteller) The Magic Flute: Retold(juvenile; based on the opera by Mozart), Putnam, 1966.
(Author of introduction) Venice,Vendome, 1979.
Letters to Christopher: Stephen Spender's Letters to Christopher Isherwood, 1929-1939, with "The Line of the Branch"—Two Thirties Journals,Black Sparrow (Santa Barbara, CA), 1980.
(Author of introduction) Herbert List: Photographs, 1930-1970,Thames Hudson, 1981.
(Contributor) Martin Friedman, Hockney Paints the Stage,Abbeville Press, 1983.
The Journals of Stephen Spender, 1939-1983,Random House, 1986.
The Temple(novel), Grove, 1988.
(Author of preface) David Finn, Evocations of "Four Quartets",Black Swan, 1991.
(Translator with others) Selected Poems by Rilke, Knopf (New York City), 1996.

Editor, with Cyril Connolly, of Horizon, 1939- 41; coeditor, with Melvin J. Lasky, 1953-66, and corresponding editor, 1966-67, Encounter; co-founder of Index on Censorship (bimonthly magazine). Contributor to numerous anthologies.