The second volume in the Auden Studies Series, The Language of Learning and the Language of Love considers Auden primarily during the first decade of his literary career as a public figure as well as private man. It includes previously unpublished poems, prose, and letters by Auden - each with a scholarly introduction and full annotation - which reveal how the well-known poet, teacher, dramatist, and sage battled with his literary ancestors, experienced love, and devised a rhetoric to express both homosexual feelings and artistic impulses.

Contributions to this volume include poems, songs, and a piece of early travel writing introduced by Auden's new biographer, the historian Richard Davenport-Hines. Lyrics offered to Benjamin Britten as cabaret songs are presented by Donald Mitchell, Philip Reed, and Nicholas Jenkins. Also in the volume is a fascinating array of essays about Auden by leading scholars in the field, including Stan Smith and Katherine Bucknell, and the German scholar and close friend of Auden, David Luke. A further Supplement to B.C. Bloomfield's magisterial Auden Bibliography of 1972 is supplied by Edward Mendelson.