Louis MacNeice
born Sept. 12, 1907, Belfast,
Ire.
died Sept. 3, 1963, London, Eng.
British poet and playwright, a member,
with W.H. Auden, C. Day-Lewis, and Stephen
Spender, of a group whose low-keyed,
unpoetic, socially committed, and topical
verse was the “new poetry” of the 1930s.
After studying at the University of
Oxford (1926–30), MacNeice became a lecturer
in classics at the University of Birmingham
(1930–36) and later in Greek at the Bedford
College for Women, London (1936–40). In 1941
he began to write and produce radio plays
for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Foremost among his fine radio verse plays
was the dramatic fantasy The Dark Tower
(1947), with music by Benjamin Britten.
MacNeice’s first book of poetry, Blind
Fireworks, appeared in 1929, followed by
more than a dozen other volumes, such as
Poems (1935), Autumn Journal (1939),
Collected Poems, 1925–1948 (1949), and,
posthumously, The Burning Perch (1963). An
intellectual honesty, Celtic exuberance, and
sardonic humour characterized his poetry,
which combined a charming natural lyricism
with the mundane patterns of colloquial
speech. His most characteristic mood was
that of the slightly detached, wryly
observant, ironic and witty commentator.
Among MacNeice’s prose works are Letters
from Iceland (with W.H. Auden, 1937) and The
Poetry of W.B. Yeats (1941). He was also a
skilled translator, particularly of Horace
and Aeschylus (Agamemnon, 1936).
