English poet, playwright, critic and librettist Wystan Hugh Auden had a major influence on twentieth-century poetry. Auden was born on February 21, 1907 in York, England. Auden was born and raised in a heavily industrial area of ​​northern England. His father, an eminent doctor with extensive knowledge of mythology, and his mother, a strict Anglican, both had a strong influence on Auden's poetry. During his childhood he moved to Birmingham. Auden's early interest in science and engineering earned him a scholarship to Oxford University, where his attraction to poetry led him to change his field of study to English. His fascination with science never completely faded and scientific references are often found in his poetry. While at Oxford Auden became familiar with modernist poetry, one was TS Eliot. It was also at Oxford that Auden became the key member of a group of writers called the "Oxford Group", which included Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice. The group adhered to various collective and anti-fascist doctrines and addressed social, political, and economic concerns in their writings. Auden pursued his love of poetry, influenced by Old English verse and the poems of Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William Blake, and Emily Dickinson. He graduated from Oxford in 1928 and his collection Poems was privately printed in the same year. He went to live in Berlin for a year, returning to England to become a teacher. His early poetry earned him a reputation as an entertaining and technically adept writer. In 1935, Auden married Erika Mann, the daughter of German novelist Thomas Mann. It was a marriage of opportunity to enable her to obtain British citizenship and escape Nazi Germany. In 1930, with the help of...... middle of paper...... he undoubtedly published Thank You, Fog: Last Poems. His beliefs changed dramatically between his early career in England, when he was a passionate advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central fixation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. A productive writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work exerted a great influence on subsequent generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1972, with his health deteriorating, Auden left America. He moved to live in Oxford, in a cottage belonging to his old college, Christ Church. By the late 1950s Auden had purchased a house in Austria, where he spent six months of the year. He died in Austria on 29 September 1973.