"Across the range of the four volumes he is again and again drawn to characterising debates, types and trends in lists of opposing traits: we have the 'Poet' and the 'Historian'; the 'Aristotelian' and the 'Democratic'; the world of the 'Dynamo' and that of the 'Virgin' (which must work together); the 'Primary' and 'Secondary' imaginations; the 'Frivolous' and the 'Earnest' (loosely mapping onto 'the rivalry between Ariel and Prospero' he sees in every poem); and, perhaps most appealingly, the 'Mabels' and the 'Alices'." Rhian Williams on WH Auden • PN Review

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