The Shield of Achilles

Back in print for the first time in decades, Auden’s National Book Award–winning poetry collection, in a critical edition that introduces it to a new generation of readersThe Shield of Achilles, which won the National Book Award in 1956, may well be W. H. Auden’s most important, intricately designed, and unified book of poetry. In addition to its famous title poem, which reimagines Achilles’s shield for the modern age, when war and heroism have changed beyond recognition, the book also includes two sequences—“Bucolics” and “Horae Canonicae”—that Auden believed to be among his most significant work. Featuring an authoritative text and an introduction and notes by Alan Jacobs, this volume brings Auden’s collection back into print for the first time in decades and offers the only critical edition of the work.As Jacobs writes in the introduction, Auden’s collection “is the boldest and most intellectually assured work of his career, an achievement that has not been sufficiently...

The cheapest new copy of The Shield of Achilles is £13.99 at Waterstones. Prices checked 12 Nov 2026

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More by W. H. Auden

More by W. H. Auden