In a review of George Orwell’s collected essays, W. H. Auden admitted that it was impossible in a single review to deal adequately with volumes that ran to over two thousand pages. The same disclaimer can be made by a reviewer who picks up these two volumes of Auden’s late prose, 1,400 pages that cover the years 1963 to his death in 1973.1 With their publication, Edward Mendelson’s superb edition of the poet’s work nears completion. (Still to come is perhaps the most important of the seven volumes, Auden’s poems.) What’s astonishing about the items collected here is that they were written in the ten-year stretch that concluded Auden’s life. Their range, brilliance, and unflagging energy show everywhere the imprint of a master.

The Dyer’s Hand, Auden’s book of essays published in 1963, was made up largely of the lectures he gave in his five years as a Professor of Poetry at Oxford. It was a collection carefully arranged, even though it’s easy for a reader to ignore the order while dipping in to read about detective novels or D. H. Lawrence’s poetry. The new books are arranged wholly chronologically; they testify, although we knew it already, to Mr. Mendelson’s editorial attention to matters large and small. His exemplary devotion and scholarship in the service of Auden is comparable to twentieth-century editions at their most impressive: Peter Davison’s Orwell, in twenty-one volumes; John Haffenden’s labors with William Empson and with T. S. Eliot’s letters; Christopher