Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) was the most significant poet of his generation. He introduced everyday language into English poetry, writing politically and reflective verses, dramatic and daring.

Initially a Marxist and later a Christian, both traditional and radical, stateless and universal, unwaveringly anti-fascist, Auden was fundamentally a moral creator. He studied English literature at Oxford and began writing at a very early age. He lived in interwar Berlin, participated in the Spanish Civil War, and from 1939 he settled in New York City.

In constant alertness, anti-romantic and reflective, he was above all a poet with unmatched technique, as, from the time of his first collection, he exhaustively studied all genres, voices, and forms of the English lyrical tradition, as well as the style of the English musical hall songs and Berlin cabaret, American blues, and Brechtian theater.

The edition includes 19 representative poems from Auden's entire oeuvre (including among others: "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", "September 1, 1939", "Funeral Blues") translated by Enrico Sofras, with the linguistic and stylistic precision and emotional intensity that characterize all his translation work.