Philip Larkin

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Standard Name: Larkin, Philip
Birth Name: Philip Arthur Larkin
PL is now widely regarded as one of the leading English poets of the later twentieth century. His output was small and his chosen form is brief, tightly structured, rhyming and self-contained, using a demotic vocabulary of deceptive simplicity. Though he often expresses brief, exuberant joy, he also returns again and again to the prospect of personal death, and the general tone of his poems is downbeat. He also published two novels as well as volumes of his reviews (of jazz and books), and other occasional prose writings.
Statue of Philip Larkin by Martin Jennings at Hull Paragon railway station in Yorkshire, unveiled 2 December 2010. Larkin is mid stride, holding a book under one arm and a hat in his other hand.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Dorothy Wellesley
Horses, having gone forward into Poems of Ten Years, 1924-1934, was selected by W. B. Yeats for The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1935, and by Philip Larkin for The Oxford Book...
Anthologization Stella Benson
A note in the volume explains that it reprints the published contents of Twenty and adds only those poems which the author herself had selected for publication from her other works.
qtd. in
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
From it Philip Larkin
Anthologization E. J. Scovell
This volume adds new poems to some reprinted. To the same year belongs her often-quoted comment: I should like the surface [of her poetry] to be entirely clear, and the meaning entirely implicit.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
From this...
Anthologization E. J. Scovell
EJS has been much anthologised: in Geoffrey Grigson 's Poetry of the Present: An Anthology of the Thirties and After, 1949, and more recently in collections edited by Fleur Adcock , Philip Larkin ,...
Anthologization Kathleen Raine
These poems were written on the border between England and Scotland, or in Scotland itself, over a three-year period.
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 20. Gale Research, 1983.
20: 294
Philip Larkin included two of them, The World and Two Invocations of Death...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Jennings
She had a remarkably catholic talent for friendship. During her student days she became a friend of Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis . Her correspondents at this and later periods of her life included her...
Friends, Associates Barbara Pym
Philip Larkin 's letter to BP expressing admiration for No Fond Return of Love began a lifelong correspondence of mutual critique and appreciation.
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press, 1994.
31
Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye. Editors Holt, Hazel and Hilary Pym, Macmillan, 1984.
201, 291, 334
Friends, Associates Barbara Pym
In a letter to Philip Larkin , Pym remarked, Iris was much smaller than I imagined—I'd always thought of her as tall, but I seemed to tower above her (though only in height, of course)...
Health Barbara Pym
Her cancer was diagnosed early, a fact of which she was appreciative. In a letter to Philip Larkin two months after her operation she wrote that the tumour was luckily caught when very small so...
Intertextuality and Influence Dorothy Wellesley
Horses did a great deal to ensure DW 's continuing reputation. Yeats particularly praised the lines on the wild grey asses fleet / With stripe from head to tail, and moderate ears.
qtd. in
Yeats, W. B., and Dorothy Wellesley. “Introduction”. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, Macmillan, 1936, p. vii - xv.
ix
The reader's...
Intertextuality and Influence Carol Shields
She took up poetry by a strangely roundabout route. Having noticed that in novels she read the female characters were hopelessly unlifelike, she was forcibly struck by an honest portrayal of a woman produced by...
Intertextuality and Influence Wendy Cope
WC says she has been influenced by Gilbert and Sullivan (one of whose patter songs provides the template for At 70: Of fitness and vitality I am not the epitome) and by Philip Larkin
Intertextuality and Influence Carol Rumens
The first item in the collection invokes Eugenio Montale as a poet of the minute detail as well as the historical vision (which, says a reviewer, effectively describes her own practice). Philip Larkin is also...
Intertextuality and Influence Christina Rossetti
CR was mourned in a sonnet by Michael Field shortly after her death. Her influence extended to many other poets of her own time or close to it, including Gerard Manley Hopkins , Rosamund Marriott Watson
Intertextuality and Influence U. A. Fanthorpe
UAF was anthologized by Adrian Barlow in Calling Kindred: Poems from the English Speaking World, 1993. At Poetry International 2000, she chose Robert Browning as her Presiding Spirit.
qtd. in
Connolly, Sally. “Woolly whispers of the past”. Times Literary Supplement, 13 Apr. 2001, p. 25.
25
Other influences she claimed are...

Timeline

14 January 1956: D. J. Enright's anthology Poets of the 1950s...

Writing climate item

14 January 1956

D. J. Enright 's anthology Poets of the 1950s brought together work by eight poets generally taken to be leading voices in the recently-catagorized, modern but anti-modernist Movement.
Collini, Stefan. “Self-Positioning”. London Review of Books, Vol.
31
, No. 12, 25 June 2009, pp. 17-19.
17
Motion, Andrew. Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life. Faber and Faber, 1993.
273

1963: Jenny Joseph published New Poems, 1963, which...

Women writers item

1963

Jenny Joseph published New Poems, 1963, which is famous for just one piece, the poem entitled Warning, which begins, When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.
Larkin, Philip, editor. The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Guild Publishing, 1984.
609-10
The Poetry Archive. 2005, http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do.

June 1965: The poet Michael Horovitz successfully brought...

Writing climate item

June 1965

The poet Michael Horovitz successfully brought poetry to a mass audience at the Albert Hall in London for a poetry festival evening of reading by Underground poets, jazz poets, Liverpool poets, and protest poets.
Drabble, Margaret. “Pressure to Perform”. The Author, Vol.
cxii
, No. 4, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2001, pp. 162-4.
163

10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...

Writing climate item

10 September 2003

Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.
“Poetry Society News: News Archive”. The Poetry Society, London.

Texts

Larkin, Philip. A Girl in Winter. Faber and Faber, 1947.
Larkin, Philip. All What Jazz: a record diary 1961-68. Faber and Faber, 1970.
Larkin, Philip. “Aubade”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1491.
Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. Editor Thwaite, Anthony, Faber and Faber; the Marvell Press, 2003.
Larkin, Philip. High Windows. Faber and Faber, 1974.
Larkin, Philip, and Rodney Fitzgerald. Incidents from Phippy’s Schooldays. Editors Allen, Brenda and James Acheson, Juvenilia Press, 2002.
Larkin, Philip. “Introduction”. Collected Poems, edited by Anthony Thwaite, Faber and Faber; the Marvell Press, 2003, p. xi - xii.
Larkin, Philip. Jill. Fortune Press, 1946.
Larkin, Philip. Required Writing: miscellaneous pieces, 1955-1982. Faber and Faber, 1983.
Larkin, Philip. Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985. Editor Thwaite, Anthony, Faber and Faber, 1992.
Larkin, Philip. The Less Deceived. Marvel Press, 1955.
Larkin, Philip. The North Ship. Fortune Press, 1945.
Larkin, Philip, editor. The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Guild Publishing, 1984.
Larkin, Philip, editor. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Clarendon Press, 1973.
Larkin, Philip. The Whitsun Weddings. Faber and Faber, 1964.
Larkin, Philip. XX Poems. Printed for the Author, 1951.