As David Leeming's fascinating biography demonstrates, Stephen Spender's life reflected the complexity and flux of the century in which he lived: his sexual ambivalence, his famous friends, the free-love days in Germany between the wars, the CIA-Encounter scandal. In David Leeming's capable ...
short stories, the novelThe Backward Son(1940), translations such as Schiller'sMary Stuart(1959), and sociological studies likeThe Year of the Young Rebels(1969). He was coeditor of the magazinesHorizonwith Cyril Connolly (1939–41) andEncounter(1953–66). Spender was knighted in 1983....
In 1941 Spender married the pianist Natasha Litvin. During the Second World War he enlisted in the London Fire Service. Spender also co-edited Horizon (1939-41) with Cyril Connolly and later edited Encounter (1953-66).After the war, Spender joined Unesco as a globe-trotting cultural emissary...
The English poet Stephen Spender (1909–1995), once better known for his poems engaged with social injustice and class struggle in the 1930s, is now remembered primarily as an anti-communist cultural agent during the Cold War, and for his commitment to a literary magazine Encounter (1953–1991...
Sir Stephen Harold Spender was born in London and educated at University College School, London, and University College, Oxford, where he met W. H. Auden. He held left-wing views during the 1930s and worked on Republican propaganda during the Spanish Civ
From the 1940s Spender was better known for his perceptive criticism and his editorial association with the influential reviews Horizon (1940–41) and Encounter (1953–67) than he was as a poet. Spender’s prose works include short stories (The Burning Cactus, 1936), a novel (The Backward ...