ABSTRACT
The literary scene in the 'thirties was marked by the appearance of a number of new names. They were young poets, who also wrote criticism and drama, and they gained almost immediate acceptance. Outstanding among them were W. H. Auden, Cecil Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, and Louis MacNeice. Seldom has a group of young writers gained such a rapid authority, or won so much comment and criticism. While the presence of a poet is undeniable, the reader may sometimes doubt whether the mind that supports it has that grand seriousness which one might desire in one placed in such a symbolic relationship to his generation. The gaiety and mockery, the jazz and noisiness, have as their unalienable accompaniment an adolescent quality, as if something in Auden remained perpetually at the undergraduate level and had atavistic tendencies towards the Junior Common Room.
