Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice

Signed typescript of the poem by the Belfast-born poet.

(Frederick) Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) was born in Belfast, educated at Marlborough School and Merton College, Oxford, where his contemporaries included W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. As poets they came to represent a new literary movement during the 1930s in which their work reflected the social and political turmoil of the age overshadowed by political tyranny and impending war.
MacNeice lectured in Classics at Birmingham University and Bedford College, University of London, before becoming lecturer in English at Cornell University in the USA. He returned to Britain during the Second World War and joined the BBC as feature writer and producer, 1941-1961.

Source: www.knowuk.co.uk (Accessed 22.01.08)

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Former location: MSS 7/iii/11/1
Purchase reported in University Librarian's Annual Report 1967/1968

Manuscript collections of Louis MacNeice can be found in various repositories including the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and Kings College Archive, Cambridge