Spender, Stephen (Harold) (1909–1995)

English poet and critic. His early poetry has a left-wing political content. With Cyril Connolly he founded the magazine Horizon (of which he was co-editor 1939–41), and Spender was co-editor of Encounter 1953–66. His Journals 1939–83 and Collected Poems 1928–1985 were published in 1985. He was knighted in 1983.

Spender was born in London and studied at Oxford. He fought in the Spanish Civil War, and served in the London fire service during World War II. In the late 1920s and 1930s he was closely associated with the writers W H Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Louis MacNeice, and C Day-Lewis, sharing their concern with socialism. Later his work became more personal and introspective, and increasingly his public literary activities were as an editor and critic. He was professor of English at University College, London, 1970–77, and lectured frequently in the USA. His collections of verse include Twenty Poems (1930), Vienna (1934), The Still Centre (1939), and Poems of Dedication (1946). Other works include the verse drama Trial of a Judge (1938), the autobiography World within World (1951), and translations of European literature. Among his critical studies are The Struggle of the Modern (1963), Love–Hate Relations (1974), T S Eliot (1975), and The Thirties and After (1978). He also wrote two novels.