THR Web Features / June 10, 2026
W.H. Auden and James Schuyler in life and literature
Alan Jacobs
( THR illustration; photograph of James Schuyler and W.H. Auden from the journal Literatura na Świecie, 2007, Warsaw, Poland.)
Until I read Nathan Kernan’s A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler I did not realize how large a role Schuyler played in Auden’s life in the late 1940s. I knew that they were friends, and that Schuyler served occasionally as a typist and secretary for Auden. But he was for a few years a central part of Auden’s life. Schuyler, then in his early twenties, who had only recently immersed himself in the gay scene of Manhattan, was introduced to Auden by Chester Kallman—Auden’s former lover and life companion—and he (Schuyler) and his boyfriend Bill Aalto became regular visitors to Auden’s apartment on Cornelia Street. When, in October of 1947, Schuyler and Aalto boarded a ship for Europe, Auden and Kallman saw them off at the dock and promised to reconnect the following spring.
