The Age of Anxiety

For the Leonard Bernstein symphony, see Symphony No. 2 (Bernstein).

First edition (US)
(publ. Random House)

The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1947; first UK edition, 1948) is a long poem in six parts by W. H. Auden, written mostly in a modern version of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse.

The poem deals, in eclogue form, with man's quest to find substance and identity in a shifting and increasingly industrialized world. Set in a wartime bar in New York City, Auden uses four characters – Quant, Malin, Rosetta, and Emble – to explore and develop his themes.

The poem won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1948. It inspired a symphony by composer Leonard Bernstein, The Age of Anxiety (Symphony No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra) and a 1950 ballet by Jerome Robbins based on the symphony.

A critical edition of the poem, edited by Alan Jacobs, was published by Princeton University Press in 2011.

"The Age of Anxiety" is also the title of the first chapter of The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts (1951).

External links

The W. H. Auden Society

W. H. Auden

Books of poetry	Poems (1930) The Orators (1932) On This Island (1936) Another Time (1940) The Double Man (1941) For the Time Being (1944) The Age of Anxiety (1947) Nones (1951) The Shield of Achilles (1955) Homage to Clio (1960) About the House (1966) City Without Walls (1969) Academic Graffiti (1971) Epistle to a Godson (1972) Thank You, Fog (1974)

Books containing prose and verse	Letters from Iceland (1937, with Louis MacNeice) Journey to a War (1939, with Christopher Isherwood)

Prose works and other books	The Enchafèd Flood (1950) The Dyer's Hand (1962) Secondary Worlds (1968) A Certain World (1970) Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Individual poems	"The Orators" (1932) "Funeral Blues" (1936) "Spain" (1937) "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1938) "Refugee Blues" (1939) "September 1, 1939" (1939) "The Unknown Citizen" (1939) "Hymn to St. Cecilia" (1940) "For the Time Being" (1944) "The Sea and the Mirror" (1944) "The Age of Anxiety" (1947) "In Praise of Limestone" (1948) "The Platonic Blow" "Horae Canonicae" (1949–55) "Bucolics" (1952–53) "The Shield of Achilles" (1955)

Plays	Paid on Both Sides (1928) The Dance of Death (1933) The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935) The Ascent of F6 (1936) On the Frontier (1938) The Play of Daniel (1958)

Libretti	Paul Bunyan (1941) The Rake's Progress (1951) Elegy for Young Lovers (1961) The Bassarids (1966) Love's Labour's Lost (1973)

Screenwriting	Night Mail (1936)

Family	George Augustus Auden (father) John Bicknell Auden (brother) Chester Kallman (companion)

Related	W. H. Auden bibliography

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