previously for Agamemnon. In 1938, Faber and Faber published a second collection of poems, The Earth Compels, the Oxford University Press published Modern Poetry, and Nancy once again contributed illustrations to a book about London Zoo, called simply Zoo. As the year – and his relationship with Nancy – drew to a close, he started work on Autumn Journal. By Christmas, Nancy was in love with Stephen Spender's brother Michael, whom she was later to marry, and at the end of the year MacNeice visited Barcelona shortly before the city fell to Franco. The poem was finished by February 1939, and published in May. It is widely viewed as MacNeice's masterpiece, recording his feelings as the Spanish Civil War raged and the United Kingdom headed towards war with Germany, as well as his personal concerns and reflections over the past decade. During the Easter holiday that year, MacNeice made a brief lecture tour of various American universities, also meeting Mary and Charles Katzmann and giving a reading with Auden and Christopher Isherwood in New York attended by John Berryman, and at which Auden met Chester Kallman for the first time. MacNeice also met the writer Eleanor Clark in New York, and arranged to spend the next academic year on sabbatical so that he could be with her. A lectureship at Cornell University was organised, and in December 1939 MacNeice sailed for America, leaving his son in Ireland. Cornell proved a success but the relationship with Eleanor did not, and MacNeice was back in London by the end of 1940. Faber and Faber published Selected Poems in March 1940, which contained 20 poems drawn from Poems 1935, The Earth Compels and Autumn Journal. It went through six impressions by 1945. MacNeice worked as a freelance journalist (he had resigned from his lecturing position at Bedford College while in America) and was awaiting the publication of Plant and Phantom, which was dedicated to Clark (the previous year, the Cuala Press had published The Last Ditch, a limited edition containing some poems that would appear in the new volume). In early 1941, MacNeice was employed by the BBC. War and after, 1941–1963 MacNeice's work for the BBC initially involved writing and producing radio programmes intended to build support for the US, and later Russia – cultural programmes emphasising links between the countries rather than outright propaganda. A critical work on W. B. Yeats