Sir Stephen Spender (1909 - 1995) was an English poet and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work.
He was friends with gay fellow poets Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden, with whom he had a mentoring relationship. Spender himself had many homosexual affairs in his earlier years, most notably with Tony Hyndman (who is called "Jimmy Younger" in his memoir World Within World). During World War II, he decided to shift his focus to heterosexuality, marrying concert pianist Natasha Litvin. Consequently, he toned down homosexual allusions in later editions of his poetry, for example the line
- "Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have a boy, a railway fare, or a revolution."
- "Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have an affair, a railway fare, or a revolution."
Stephen Spender was knighted in 1983.
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2 Bibliography (incomplete) |
Spender's seemingly changing attitudes towards homosexuality and heterosexuality have caused him to be labeled bisexual, repressed, latently homophobic, or simply someone so complex as to resist easy labeling.
Perhaps this discussion was foreseen by him, because he addresses this issue quite thoroughly in World Within World. However, even there he cannot fully decide on one explanation for what he does but prefers to give several ones, right after writing about his first, clearly homosexual, but also very one-sided relationship with a fellow student at Oxford:
Stephen Spender's outlook on sexuality
Bibliography (incomplete)
Poetry
Letters
Essays
Drama
Memoir
Fiction