Sir Stephen Spender 1909 – 1995 was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965. Spender said at various times throughout his life that he never passed any exam. Perhaps his closest friend and the man who had the biggest influence on him was W. H. Auden, who introduced him to Christopher Isherwood. The earliest version of Poems written by Auden was handprinted by Spender. He left Oxford without taking a degree and in 1929 moved to Hamburg. Isherwood invited him to come to Berlin. Every six months, Spender went back to England. Spender was acquainted with fellow Auden Group members Louis MacNeice, Edward Upward and Cecil Day-Lewis. He was friendly with David Jones and later came to know W. B. Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Joseph Brodsky, Isaiah Berlin, Mary McCarthy, Roy Campbell, Raymond Chandler, Dylan Thomas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Colin Wilson, Aleister Crowley, F.T. Prince and T. S. Eliot, as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group, particularly Virginia Woolf.