Denis DonoGhue, Good Grief, ‘New York Review of Books'

Donoghue (b. 1928) holds the Henry James Chair of Letters at New York University. His works include ‘Connoisseurs of Chaos: Ideas of Order in Modern American Literature’ (1966), ‘The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in Modern Literature’ (1968), ‘Thieves of Fire’ (1973), and ‘The Sovereign Ghost: Studies in Imagination’ (1976).

This review also considers Auden’s ‘Forewords and Afterwords’, selected by Edward Mendelson, ‘Man’s Place: An Essay on Auden’, by Richard Johnson, and ‘W.H. Auden as a Social Poet’, by Frederick Buell.