joy is mine not yours -- to have come so far,
Whose cleverest invention was lately fur;
Lizards my best once who took years to breed,
Could not control the temperature of blood.
To reach that shape for your face to assume,
Pleasure to many and despair to some,
I shifted ranges, lived epochs handicapped
By climate, wars, or what the young men kept,
Modified theories on the types of dross,
Altered desire and history of dress.

(1929)

In 1963, W. H. Auden said that 'English life... is marvellous in a way, but it is for me a family life, and I love my family but I don't want to live with them.' 'Family Ghosts' is part of an attempt to re-embed Auden in English, American and German history by developing an online reference database showing his family relationships. This is therefore a site about class, religion, culture and social patterns in those societies and not about a single individual's 'line', artificially isolated from the matrix of history.

Interested in a guide to help you find links to some of the well-known individuals from the worlds of culture, politics, war, and science included in the 'Family Ghosts' database? Click here: Hotspots: 'Family Ghosts'. Alternatively, and more speculatively, you can simply try typing a name into the search box on the top right hand side of the page.

This site is focussed on W. H. Auden. The more than 26,000 individuals in its database are all related, more or less directly, to Auden. However, users need not limit their searches and inquiries to finding a person's relationship to Auden. Just as one can travel -- sometimes very simply and sometimes only very circuitously -- from any station on the London Underground to any other station on the Underground network, so, using the 'Relationship Chart' tool accessible via the 'Charts' button on the top left side of the 'Family Ghosts' homepage, you can link any individual listed in this database to any other individual – say, Fred Astaire to Sigmund Freud, or Edward I to Jessica Mitford. Auden need not be included. Depending on the two individuals you enter, the relationship diagrammed by the 'Relationship Chart' may (to you) be insignificant or it may be suggestive.

For Auden's own ideas about genealogies, see the box titled 'Auden on Genealogies' below.

Nicholas Jenkins compiled the information on this website with invaluable help from Anthony Andrews and from Edward Mendelson, as well as in-depth and patient technical assistance from Matthew Jockers. In particular, Anthony Andrews brought to the project an extraordinary wealth of genealogical expertise which he contributed generously and unstintingly. Grateful thanks, and public absolution of all responsibility for errors and infelicities, are thus owed to each of these individuals.

The site does not attempt a procedure of even or complete coverage. In most cases, it does not list all members of any particular family. Instead, the effort has been to trace connections between selected individuals, usually on the basis of general historical or cultural interest. If you have any comments, any information to share about Auden's genealogical history, or if you spot mistakes here, please contact Nicholas Jenkins.