Biographie

In 1935 he entered into what was then known as a lavender marriage (a marriage of convenience, often by or between gay and lesbians) to the lesbian German actress and writer, Erika Mann, in order that she could obtain British citizenship, and a UK passport, so that she would not have to return to Nazi Germany, and also allowing her to move to the United States. They never lived together, but remained close friends and technically married until Erika's death in 1969.

Son-in-law of German writer Thomas Mann

He was a long-time friend and frequent correspondent of J.R.R. Tolkien (although they rarely saw each other).

Longtime romantic companion and sometime writing collaborator of Chester Kallman.

Originally scheduled to co-write the lyrics for "Man of La Mancha" with Chester Kallman. Both he and Kallman dropped out of the project when they and librettist Dale Wasserman disagreed about the point of view they should take when writing songs for Don Quixote to sing. Auden and Kallman did write some lyrics for the show, but they were entirely scrapped, and Joe Darion was hired instead.

[on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"] If someone dislikes it, I shall never trust their literary judgment about anything again.

[observation, 1970] What a pleasant surprise it would be to meet a crew-cut hippie or a company director with hair down to his shoulders.

Even Hifler, I imagine, would have defined his New Jerusalem as a world where there are no Jews, not as a world where they are being gassed by the million day after day in ovens. But he was a Utopian, so the ovens had to come in.

[considering Shakespeare's sonnets] Art may spill over from creating a world of language into the dangerous and forbidden task of trying to create a human being.

I think a great many of us are haunted by the feelings that our society - and I don't mean just the United States or Europe, but our whole world-wide technological civilization, whether officially labelled capitalist, socialist or communist - is going to go smash, and probably deserves to.