Spender, Sir Stephen Harold

▪ 1996

      British poet and critic (b. Feb. 28, 1909, London, England—d. July 16, 1995, London), was one of the preeminent English poets of the 1930s and a member of the "Oxford generation," a small group of youthful literary aesthetes whose innovative, socially committed work in that decade gave a new direction to English literature and left a lasting effect on later generations. While Spender was an undergraduate at University College, Oxford, he developed lifelong friendships with C. Day-Lewis and W.H. Auden, whose first collection of poems Spender printed in 1928. He also coedited Oxford Poetry (1929) with Louis MacNeice, and he lived with the novelist Christopher Isherwood for several months during a sojourn (1930-33) in Germany. Poems (1933), Spender's first important verse collection, was followed in quick succession by another, Vienna (1934); a volume of literary criticism, The Destructive Element (1935); and a collection of short stories, The Burning Cactus (1936). Although he remained a committed liberal, Spender joined the Communist Party but quickly left after becoming disenchanted with Marxism. He was coeditor (1939-41) of the literary journal Horizon and of Encounter (1953-67) until he learned of that periodical's links to the CIA. His total output included fiction, essays, plays, criticism, journals, translations, and several volumes of poetry, notably Dolphins (1994), which was published on his 85th birthday. He also held several academic positions, in particular as a professor of English at University College, London (1970-77, emeritus from 1977). Spender was the first non-American to serve (1965) as consultant in poetry in English to the U.S. Library of Congress. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1962 and knighted in 1983.

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