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Auden, Salinger, and the Importance of Literary Biography

In an age when literary biography counts for so little, these two writers are not taking their subjects for granted — asserting that we should, in other words, be interested in them or interested in them again.

Erich Auerbach/Getty Images
W.H. Auden. Erich Auerbach/Getty Images
CARL ROLLYSON
CARL ROLLYSON

‘The Island: War and Belonging in Auden’s England’
By Nicholas Jenkins
Belknap Press, 768 pages

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CARL ROLLYSON
CARL ROLLYSON

Mr. Rollyson is the author of The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. He has published fourteen biographies and has written about biography for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington, Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Criterion, and other publications.

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