Sir Stephen Harold Spender was born on February 28, 1909, in London to journalist Harold Spender and Violet Hilda Schuster, a painter and poet. Stephen Spender was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. he was educated at University College School, London, and at University College, Oxford. While an undergraduate he met the poets W.H. Auden and C. Day-Lewis, and during 1930–33 he spent many months in Germany with the writer Christopher Isherwood.

Spender’s books of poetry include Twenty Poems (1930), Vienna(1934), The Still Centre (1939), Poems of Dedication (1946), and The Generous Days (1971). He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal For Poetry in 1971. Spender died from heart failure in Westminster, London on July 16,1995 at the age of 86.