Edward Mendelson Biography

American scholarand editor; born in New York, educated at the University of Rochester and at Johns Hopkins University. He began his academic career at Yale in 1969 and became Professor of English at Columbia University in 1983. In the course of his doctoral research he had numerous meetings with W. H. Auden, who chose him to be his literary executor. His edition of Auden's Collected Poems appeared in 1976. He subsequently published The English Auden (1977), which contains poetry, essays, and dramatic writings from the years 1927 to 1939; the poems appear without any of Auden's later alterations and are supplemented by a valuable appendix presenting many uncollected texts. Early Auden (1981) is a critical companion to The English Auden, providing a lucid exposition of the ideas and influences characterizing the initial stages of Auden's career. W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood: Plays (1989) and Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings by W.H. Auden, 1939–1973 (1993) are two volumes of his projected complete edition of Auden's works. Other publications he has edited include Thomas Pynchom: A Collection of Critical Essays (1978).