Background
Philip Larkin was born on August 9, 1922, in Radford, Coventry, United Kingdom; son of Sydney and Eva Emily Larkin.
(For the first time, Faber publish a selection from the po...)
For the first time, Faber publish a selection from the poetry of Philip Larkin. Drawing on Larkin's four collections and on his uncollected poems. Chosen by Martin Amis. 'Many poets make us smile; how many poets make us laugh - or, in that curious phrase, "laugh out loud" (as if there's another way of doing it)? Who else uses an essentially conversational idiom to achieve such a variety of emotional effects? Who else takes us, and takes us so often, from sunlit levity to mellifluous gloom?... Larkin, often, is more than memorable: he is instantly unforgettable.' - Martin Amis.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0571258115/?tag=2022091-20
( The famed poet's eloquent first novel. A novel in whi...)
The famed poet's eloquent first novel. A novel in which a young man travels from his Midlands home to Oxford University, and finds himself out of his depth in its rarefied atmosphere.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879519614/?tag=2022091-20
( The complete poems of the most admired British poet of ...)
The complete poems of the most admired British poet of his generation This entirely new edition brings together all of Philip Larkin's poems. In addition to those that appear in Collected Poems (1988) and Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005), some unpublished pieces from Larkin's typescripts and workbooks are included, as well as verse?by turns scurrilous, satirical, affectionate, and sentimental?that had been tucked away in his letters. For the first time, Larkin's poems are given a comprehensive commentary. This draws critically upon, and substantially extends, the accumulated scholarship on Larkin, and covers closely relevant historical contexts, persons and places, allusions and echoes, and linguistic usage. Prominence is given to the poet's comments on his own work, which often outline the circumstances that gave rise to a poem or state that he was trying to achieve. Larkin often played down his literariness, but his poetry enrichingly alludes to and echoes the writings of many others. Archie Burnett's commentary establishes Larkin as a more complex and more literary poet than many readers have suspected.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374533660/?tag=2022091-20
( One of the best-known and best-loved poets of the Engli...)
One of the best-known and best-loved poets of the English-speaking world, Philip Larkin had only a small number of poems published during his lifetime. Collected Poems brings together not only all his books--The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows--but also his uncollected poems from 1940 to 1984. This new edition reflects Larkin's own ordering for his poems and is the first collection to present the body of his work with the organization he preferred. Preserving everything he published in his lifetime, the new Collected Poems is an indispensable contribution to the legacy of an icon of twentieth-century poetry.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374529205/?tag=2022091-20
Philip Larkin was born on August 9, 1922, in Radford, Coventry, United Kingdom; son of Sydney and Eva Emily Larkin.
He attended the King Henry VIII School in Coventry, then went to St. John's College in Oxford, from which he graduated in 1943 while the war was still in progress. Larkin formed strong friendships with other young men, fellow students in St. John's College. A sensitive and introspective youth, his pre-university memories were of loneliness and passivity.
The embodiment of the poetic manifesto was an anthology, New Lines (1956), edited by Robert Conquest.
Although he lamented the middle class work ethic ("Toads": "What should I let the toad work/squat on my life?"), he was never content with just one job.
Earlier, Larkin seems to have been in conflict over his main writing outlet—should it be fiction or poetry? The poems of Larkin's earliest period were collected in The North Ship (1945).
This was followed by an international success, the volume entitled The Less Deceived, which appeared a decade later (reissued, 1960).
No post-war poetry has so caught the moment, and caught it without straining after ephemera. "Church Going" begins in a characteristically modest, understated way: "Once I am sure there's nothing going on, I step inside, letting the door thud shut. … Hatless, I take off my cycle-clips in awkward reverence. " The Whitsun Weddings, another collection of poems, appeared in 1964.
Here, in "Send No Money, " Larkin describes himself as an observer, not an active participant in life.
Acute, witty observation is a hallmark of Larkin's later volume of poetry, High Windows (1974).
The personal, reticently confessional voice is ever-present, a bit more open here in the aftermath of a generation of sexual revolution: "Sexual intercourse began … (Though just too late for me). Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP" ("Annus Mirabilis").
The deep-seated pessimism is almost always redeemed and transmuted by Larkin wit: "Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.
("This Be The Verse").
Happily, despite this literary gloom, Larkin's later life seems to have been blessed with warm personal relationships as well as mounting professional acclaim.
After she had been unable for years to get a publisher for her seventh novel, Pym was named by the two men one of the most under-rated 20th-century novelists (in response to a Times Literary Supplement questionnaire, 1977).
Pym, rediscovered, published three more novels; she and Larkin remained friends until her death in 1980.
He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, articles gathered in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and he edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973).
His many honors include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetryю. He was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984, following the death of Sir John Betjeman.
( One of the best-known and best-loved poets of the Engli...)
( The complete poems of the most admired British poet of ...)
(For the first time, Faber publish a selection from the po...)
( The famed poet's eloquent first novel. A novel in whi...)
At Oxford, however, things began to look up. Foremost among these were novelists-poets Kingsley Amis and John Wain, leaders of the "Angry Young Men, " whose later fiction embodied some of the strong social protest held in check until the end of the war. Paradoxically, it was their conservatist tendencies in poetry which bound Larkin, most quiet of the three, to the others in an aesthetic which became known as "The Movement. "
Quotations:
Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself. Death is no different whined at than withstood.
'I suppose it's not the place's fault, ' I said. 'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere. "
Recognition of Larkin's concern for his profession was officially demonstrated by membership on the Literary Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain (1980 - 1982).
The deep-seated pessimism is almost always redeemed and transmuted by Larkin wit.
Two other interests of this writer deserve mention: Larkin was jazz correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, 1961-1971; he also edited the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse (1973), in which the poetry selected clearly emphasizes Larkin's "Movement" beliefs.
