Spender, Harold Stephen ___ 1909-1995 ___ British ___ poet

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Spender was born in London to a mother of German-Jewish descent and to a liberal journalist. He was educated at University College School, Hampstead, and at Oxford where he became acquainted with other poets such as Auden, Isherwood and MacNeice. After Oxford, Spender lived in Hamburg for a while and then Berlin. From the start of the 1930s, he began to publish poetry and literary criticism, much of it flavoured by his left-wing politics. One of his poems, 'The Pylons', gave rise to the label 'Pylon Poets'. During the Spanish Civil War, Spender helped write propaganda for the Republican side; during the Second World War he worked for the National Fire Service. In the early 1950s, he published an autobiography giving an account of his relationship with the Communist Party. He went on to be editor of 'Encounter' from 1953 to 1967, and to be involved with 'Index on Censorship'. At times, he also lectured in the US. He was knighted in 1983. In the same year, he appears to have stopped writing his journal. An edited version of his diaries was published in 1985.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - The ghost of a reader

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1939-1983 ___ literary political social culture people Germany Russia US

WEB TEXT LINKS
some citations
about
about

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Stephen Spender's Journals 1939-1983
 

May 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.