This is the fifth volume to be published in the ongoing complete edition of Auden's works, under the editorship of Edward Mendelson. It includes the essays, reviews, and other prose that Auden published or prepared for publication between 1949 -- when he wrote his first book of criticism, The Enchafèd Flood -- and December 1955, shortly before he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford and began the series of lectures that he published, with much else, in The Dyer's Hand.

The texts throughout this edition are, wherever possible, newly edited from Auden's manuscripts, and the notes report variant readings from all published versions.