Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal—A Guided Reading

Andrew Roycroft reflects on a classic poem.

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by Andrew Roycroft

Why Should We Read Louis MacNeice?

The minor poets, like the minor prophets, are every bit as important as their major counterparts. Away from the big names and well-worn lines of the celebrated and the laureated there lives a body of work which is full and true to the grain of things, and that rewards us with the blessing of discovery when we come into contact with it.

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) straddles the line of major and minor poet, perhaps like no other. Edited by TS Eliot and an intimate friend of WH Auden (they once travelled to Iceland together on a shared literary project), MacNeice’s verse is deeply loved by a significant number of people globally, but largely unknown to many others. For those discovering his work for the first time, poetic wealth awaits.

Over the course of three articles, we are going to spend some time with MacNeice’s most major poem, Autumn Journal. Running to over 2000 lines, the poem is a record of September to December 1938, charting the moment that the poet and his world found themselves in, with Europe on the brink of war, and with all the certainties of their lives about to be shaken.