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Philip Larkin

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• University of Babylon - Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
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• Philip Larkin - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Philip Larkin (born August 9, 1922, Coventry , Warwickshire , England—died December 2, 1985, Kingston upon Hull) was the most representative and highly regarded of the poets who gave expression to a clipped, antiromantic sensibility prevalent in English verse in the 1950s.

Larkin was educated at the University of Oxford on a scholarship, an experience that provided material for his first novel , Jill (1946; rev. ed. 1964). (His first book of poetry , The North Ship , was published at his own expense in 1945.) Another novel, A Girl in Winter , followed in 1947. He became well known with The Less Deceived (1955), a volume of verse the title of which suggests Larkin’s reaction and that of other British writers who then came into notice (e.g., Kingsley Amis and John Wain ) against the political enthusiasms of the 1930s and what they saw as the emotional excesses of the poetry of the ’40s. His own verse is not without emotion, but it tends to be understated.

Larkin became librarian at the University of Hull in Yorkshire in 1955 and was jazz critic for The Daily Telegraph (1961–71), from which occupation were gleaned the essays in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–68 (1970). The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974) are his later volumes of poetry. He edited the Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973). Required Writing (1982) is a collection of miscellaneous essays.

Philip Larkin

A short biography of philip larkin, philip larkin’s literary  style, poetic style.

Larkin ends the poem with a statement that “I just think it will happen soon.”

Prose and non-fiction

Philip larkin and elements of positive meanings in his literary works.

However, some critics defend the poetry of Philip Larkin, particularly, and the “poetry of movement” in general.  These critics assert that though the poetry has sad-eyed realism, we also find little positive elements in Larkin’s Poetry. For example, the poem “The Less Deceived” discusses avoidance; the message Larkin is trying to convey is to be “less deceived” rather than to be “more deceived.” Moreover, life is full of hurdles, and to go on in life without hurdles is impossible. Thus, the only solution to get away with these hurdles is to face them. With little efforts, negativity in life can be changed into positivity. Even though the mindset of Philip Larkin is negative, there is little positivity at the end of every poem. There is little hope; at least it is in every poem of Larkin if examined in detail. 

Realism in Philip Larkin’s Works

Themes in philip  larkin’s works, works of philip larkin.

PHILIP LARKIN BIOGRAPHY

Philip Arthur Larkin was born on August 9, 1922, in Coventry. He was the second child, and only son, of Sydney and Eva Larkin. Sydney Larkin was City Treasurer between the years 1922-44. Larkin’s sister, some ten years his senior, was called Catherine, but was known as Kitty.

He attended the City’s King Henry VIII School between 1930 and 1940, and made regular contributions to the school magazine,  The Coventrian , which, between 1939 and 1940, he also helped to edit .

After leaving King Henry VIII, he went to St. John’s College, Oxford, and despite the war (Larkin had failed his army medical because of his poor eyesight), was able to complete his degree without interruption, graduating in 1943 with First Class Honours in English. His closest friends at Oxford were Kingsley Amis and Bruce Montgomery.

The first of his poems to be published in a national weekly was ‘Ultimatum’, which appeared in the Listener, November 28, 1940. Then in June 1943, three of his poems were published in  Oxford Poetry (1942-43)  . These were ‘A Stone Church Damaged By A Bomb’, ‘Mythological Introduction’, and ‘I dreamed of an out-thrust arm of land’.

After graduating, Larkin lived with his parents for a while, before being appointed Librarian at Wellington, Shropshire, in November of 1943. Here, he studied to qualify as a professional librarian, but continued to write and publish. In 1945, ten of his poems, which later that year would be included in  The North Ship , appeared in  Poetry from Oxford in Wartime .

Two novels,  Jill  and  A Girl in Winter  were published in 1946 and 1947 respectively.

In 1946, Larkin became assistant Librarian at the University College of Leicester. He completed his professional studies and became an Associate of the Library Association in 1949. In October 1950, he became Sub-Librarian at Queen’s University, Belfast. It was in Belfast that he applied fresh vigour to his poetry activities, and, in 1951, had a small collection,  XX Poems , privately printed in an edition of 100 copies. Also, in 1954, the Fantasy Press published a pamphlet containing five of his poems. The Marvell Press, based in Hessle, near Hull, published ‘Toads’ and ‘Poetry of departures’ in  Listen . It would be the Marvell Press that published his next collection  The Less Deceived .

Larkin took up the position of Librarian at the University of Hull on March 21, 1955, and it was in October of that year that The Less Deceived was published. It was this collection that would be the foundation of his reputation as one of the foremost figures in 20th Century poetry.

It was during the years 1961-71 that Larkin contributed monthly reviews of jazz recordings for the  Daily Telegraph , and these reviews were brought together and published in 1970 under the title  All What Jazz: a record diary 1961-1968 . He also edited the  Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse , which was published in 1973.

His last collection  High Windows  was published in 1974, and confirmed him as one of the finest poets in English Literary history. ‘Aubade’, his last great poem, was published in  The Times Literary Supplement  in December 1977. If this had been the only poem Larkin had ever written, his place in English poetry would still be secure.

A collection of his essays and reviews was published in November 1983 as  Required Writing: miscellaneous pieces 1955-1982 , and won the W.H. Smith Literary Award for 1984.

Larkin received many awards in recognition of his writing, especially in his later years. In 1975 he was awarded the CBE, and in 1976 was given the German Shakespeare-Pries. He chaired the Booker Prize Panel in 1977, was made Companion of Literature in 1978, and served on the Literature Panel of the Arts between 1980 and 1982. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Library Association in 1980. In 1982 the University of Hull made him a Professor.

In 1984 he received an honorary D.Litt. from Oxford University, and was elected to the Board of the British Library. In December of 1984 he was offered the chance to succeed Sir John Betjeman as Poet Laureate but declined, being unwilling to accept the high public profile and associated media attention of the position.

In mid 1985 Larkin was admitted to hospital with an illness in his throat, and on June 11 an operation was carried out to remove his oesophagus. His health was deteriorating, and when he was awarded the much prized Order of the Companion of Honour he was unable, because of ill health, to attend the investiture, which was due to take place at Buckingham Palace on November 25. He received the official notification courtesy of the Royal Mail.

Philip Larkin died of cancer at 1.24 a.m. on Monday December 2 1985. He was 63 years old.

By James L. Orwin

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Philip Larkin

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Philip Larkin

On August 9, 1922, Philip Larkin was born in Coventry, England. He attended St. John’s College, Oxford. His first book of poetry, The North Ship , was published in 1945 and, though not particularly strong on its own, is notable insofar as certain passages foreshadow the unique sensibility and maturity that characterizes his later work.

In 1946, Larkin discovered the poetry of Thomas Hardy and became a great admirer of his poetry, learning from Hardy how to make the commonplace and often dreary details of his life the basis for extremely tough, unsparing, and memorable poems. With his second volume of poetry, The Less Deceived (1955), Larkin became the preeminent poet of his generation, and a leading voice of what came to be called “The Movement,” a group of young English writers who rejected the prevailing fashion for Neo-Romantic writing in the style of W. B.  Yeats and Dylan Thomas . Like Hardy, Larkin focused on intense personal emotion but strictly avoided sentimentality or self-pity.

In 1964, Larkin confirmed his reputation as a major poet with the publication of The Whitsun Weddings , and again in 1974 with High Windows : collections whose searing, often mocking, wit does not conceal the poet's dark vision and underlying obsession with universal themes of mortality, love, and human solitude. Deeply anti-social and a great lover and published critic of American jazz, Larkin never married and worked as a librarian in the provincial city of Hull, where he died on December 2, 1985.

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Poems & Poets

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry, England in 1922. He earned his BA from St. John’s College, Oxford, where he befriended novelist and poet Kingsley Amis and finished with First Class Honors in English. After graduating, Larkin undertook professional studies to become a librarian. He worked in libraries his entire life, first in Shropshire and Leicester, and then at Queen’s College in Belfast, and finally as librarian at the University of Hull. In addition to collections of poetry, Larkin published two novels— Jill  (1946) and  A Girl in Winter  (1947)—as well as criticism, essays, and reviews of jazz music. The latter were collected in two volumes:  All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1968  (1970; 1985) and  Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982  (1984).  He was one of post-war England’s most famous poets, and was commonly referred to as “England’s  other  Poet Laureate” until his death in 1985. Indeed, when the position of laureate became vacant in 1984, many poets and critics favored Larkin’s appointment, but Larkin preferred to avoid the limelight.

Larkin achieved acclaim on the strength of an extremely small body of work—just over one hundred pages of poetry in four slender volumes that appeared at almost decade-long intervals. These collections, especially  The Less Deceived  (1955),   The Whitsun Weddings  (1964),  and  High Windows  (1974),  present “a poetry from which even people who distrust poetry, most people, can take comfort and delight,” according to  X.J. Kennedy  in the  New Criterion.  Larkin employed the traditional tools of poetry—rhyme, stanza, and meter—to explore the often uncomfortable or terrifying experiences thrust upon common people in the modern age. As  Alan Brownjohn  noted in  Philip Larkin,  the poet produced without fanfare “the most technically brilliant and resonantly beautiful, profoundly disturbing yet appealing and approachable, body of verse of any English poet in the last twenty-five years.” Despite his wide popularity, Larkin “shied from publicity, rarely consented to interviews or readings, cultivated his image as right-wing curmudgeon and grew depressed at his fame,” according to  J.D. McClatchy  in the  New York Times Book Review.   Phoenix  contributor Alun R. Jones suggests that, as librarian at the remote University of Hull, Larkin “avoided the literary, the metropolitan, the group label, and embraced the nonliterary, the provincial, and the purely personal.” From his base in Hull, Larkin composed poetry that both reflected the dreariness of postwar provincial England and voiced the spiritual despair of the modern age. McClatchy notes Larkin wrote “in clipped, lucid stanzas, about the failures and remorse of age, about stunted lives and spoiled desires.” Critics feel that this localization of focus and the colloquial language used to describe settings and emotions endear Larkin to his readers.  Agenda  reviewer George Dekker noted that no living poet “can equal Larkin on his own ground of the familiar English lyric, drastically and poignantly limited in its sense of any life beyond, before or after, life today in England.” Throughout his life, England was Larkin’s emotional territory to an eccentric degree. The poet distrusted travel abroad and professed ignorance of foreign literature, including most modern American poetry. He also tried to avoid the cliches of his own culture, such as the tendency to read portent into an artist’s childhood. In his poetry and essays, Larkin remembered his early years as “unspent” and “boring,” as he grew up the son of a city treasurer in Coventry. Poor eyesight and stuttering plagued Larkin as a youth; he retreated into solitude, read widely, and began to write poetry as a nightly routine. In 1940 he enrolled at Oxford, beginning “a vital stage in his personal and literary development,” according to Bruce K. Martin in the  Dictionary of Literary Biography.  At Oxford Larkin studied English literature and cultivated the friendship of those who shared his special interests, including Kingsley Amis and John Wain. He graduated with first class honors in 1943, and, having to account for himself with the wartime Ministry of Labor, he took a position as librarian in the small Shropshire town of Wellington. While there he wrote both of his novels as well as  The North Ship,  his first volume of poetry. After working at several other university libraries, Larkin moved to Hull in 1955 and began a 30-year association with the library at the University of Hull. He is still admired for his expansion and modernization of that facility. Larkin’s  Selected Letters,  edited by his longtime friend, poet Anthony Thwaite, reveals much about the writer’s personal and professional life between 1940 and 1985.  Washington Post Book World  reviewer John Simon noted that the letters are “about intimacy, conviviality, and getting things off one’s heaving chest into a heedful ear.” He suggests that “these cheerful, despairing, frolicsome, often foul-mouthed, grouchy, self-assertive and self-depreciating missives should not be missed by anyone who appreciates Larkin’s verse.” In a  Paris Review  interview, Larkin dismissed the notion that he studied the techniques of poets that he admired in order to perfect his craft. Most critics feel, however, that the poems of both  William Butler Yeats  and  Thomas Hardy  exerted an influence on Larkin as he sought his own voice. Hardy’s work provided the main impetus to Larkin’s mature poetry, according to critics. A biographer in  Contemporary Literary Criticism  claimed “Larkin credited his reading of Thomas Hardy’s verse for inspiring him to write with greater austerity and to link experiences and emotions with detailed settings.” In Nine Contemporary Poets: A Critical Introduction ( Methuen, 1979), Peter R. King contends that a close reading of Hardy taught Larkin “that a modern poet could write about the life around him in the language of the society around him. He encouraged [Larkin] to use his poetry to examine the reality of his own life.” In his work  Philip Larkin, Martin also claims that Larkin learned from Hardy “that his own life, with its often casual discoveries, could become poems, and that he could legitimately share such experience with his readers. From this lesson [came Larkin’s] belief that a poem is better based on something from ‘unsorted’ experience than on another poem or other art.”

This viewpoint allied Larkin with the poets of The Movement, a loose association of British writers who “called, implicitly in their poetry and fiction and explicitly in critical essays, for some sort of commonsense return to more traditional techniques,” according to Martin in  Philip Larkin.  Martin added that the rationale for this “antimodernist, antiexperimental stance is their stated concern with clarity: with writing distinguished by precision rather than obscurity. ... [The Movement urged] not an abandonment of emotion, but a mixture of rationality with feeling, of objective control with subjective abandon. Their notion of what they felt the earlier generation of writers, particularly poets, lacked, centered around the ideas of honesty and realism about self and about the outside world.” King observed that Larkin “had sympathy with many of the attitudes to poetry represented by The Movement,” but this view of the poet’s task antedated the beginnings of that group’s influence. Nonetheless, in the opinion of  Washington Post Book World  contributor Chad Walsh, Larkin says “seemed to fulfill the credo of the Movement better than anyone else, and he was often singled out, as much for damnation as for praise, by those looking for the ultimate Movement poet.” Brownjohn concludes that in the company of The Movement, Larkin’s own “distinctive technical skills, the special subtlety in his adaptation of a very personal colloquial mode to the demands of tight forms, were not immediately seen to be outstanding; but his strengths as a craftsman have increasingly come to be regarded as one of the hallmarks of his talent.” Those strengths of craftsmanship and technical skill in Larkin’s mature works received almost universal approval from literary critics. London  Sunday Times  correspondent Ian Hamilton wrote: “Supremely among recent poets, [Larkin] was able to accommodate a talking voice to the requirements of strict metres and tight rhymes, and he had a faultless ear for the possibilities of the iambic line.” David Timms expressed a similar view in his book entitled  Philip Larkin.  Technically, notes Timms, Larkin was “an extraordinarily various and accomplished poet, a poet who [used] the devices of metre and rhyme for specific effects… His language is never flat, unless he intends it to be so for a particular reason, and his diction is never stereotyped. He [was] always ready… to reach across accepted literary boundaries for a word that will precisely express what he intends.” As King explains, Larkin’s best poems “are rooted in actual experiences and convey a sense of place and situation, people and events, which gives an authenticity to the thoughts that are then usually raised by the poet’s observation of the scene… Joined with this strength of careful social observation is a control over tone changes and the expression of developing feelings even within a single poem… which is the product of great craftsmanship. To these virtues must be added the fact that in all the poems there is a lucidity of language which invites understanding even when the ideas expressed are paradoxical or complex.”  New Leader  contributor Pearl K. Bell concludes that Larkin’s poetry “fits with unresisting precision into traditional structures… filling them with the melancholy truth of things in the shrunken, vulgarized and parochial England of the 1970s.” If Larkin’s style was traditional, the subject matter of his poetry was derived exclusively from modern life. In the Southern Review , John Press contended that Larkin’s artistic work “delineates with considerable force and delicacy the pattern of contemporary sensibility, tracing the way in which we respond to our environment, plotting the ebb and flow of the emotional flux within us, embodying in his poetry attitudes of heart and mind that seem peculiarly characteristic of our time: doubt, insecurity, boredom, aimlessness and malaise.” A sense that life is a finite prelude to oblivion underlies many of Larkin’s poems. King suggests that the work is “a poetry of disappointment, of the destruction of romantic illusions, of man’s defeat by time and his own inadequacies,” as well as a study of how dreams, hopes, and ideals “are relentlessly diminished by the realities of life.” To Larkin, Brownjohn noted, life was never “a matter of blinding revelations, mystical insights, expectations glitteringly fulfilled. Life, for Larkin, and, implicitly, for all of us, is something lived mundanely, with a gradually accumulating certainty that its golden prizes are sheer illusion.” Love is one of the supreme deceptions of humankind in Larkin’s worldview, as King observed: “Although man clutches at his instinctive belief that only love will comfort, console and sustain him, such a hope is doomed to be denied. A lover’s promise is an empty promise and the power to cure suffering through love is a tragic illusion.” Stanley Poss in  Western Humanities Review  maintained that Larkin’s poems demonstrate “desperate clarity and restraint and besieged common sense. And what they mostly say is, be beginning to despair, despair, despair.” Larkin arrived at his conclusions candidly, concerned to expose evasions so that the reader might stand “naked but honest, ‘less deceived’ ... before the realities of life and death,” to quote King. Larkin himself offered a rather wry description of his accomplishments—an assessment that, despite its levity, links him emotionally to his work. In 1979 he told the  Observer:  “I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any… Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.” Critics can find moments of affirmation in Larkin’s poetry, notwithstanding its pessimistic and cynical bent. Brownjohn admits that Larkin’s works take a bleak view of human existence; at the same time, however, they contain “the recurrent reflection that others, particularly the young, might still find happiness in expectation.”  Contemporary Literature  essayist James Naremore expanded on Larkin’s tendency to detach himself from the action in his poems: “From the beginning, Larkin’s work has manifested a certain coolness and lack of self-esteem, a need to withdraw from experience; but at the same time it has continued to show his desire for a purely secular type of romance… Larkin is trying to assert his humanity, not deny it… The greatest virtue in Larkin’s poetry is not so much his suppression of large poetic gestures as his ability to recover an honest sense of joy and beauty.” The  New York Times  once quoted Larkin as having said that a poem “represents the mastering, even if just for a moment, of the pessimism and the melancholy, and enables you—you the poet, and you, the reader—to go on.” King sensed this quiet catharsis when he concluded: “Although one’s final impression of the poetry is certainly that the chief emphasis is placed on a life ‘unspent’ in the shadow of ‘untruth,’ moments of beauty and affirmation are not entirely denied. It is the difficulty of experiencing such moments after one has become so aware of the numerous self-deceptions that man practices on himself to avoid the uncomfortable reality which lies at the heart of Larkin’s poetic identity.”

Dedicated to reaching out for his readers, the poet was a staunch opponent of modernism in all artistic media. Larkin felt that such cerebral experimentation ultimately created a barrier between an artist and the audience and provided unnecessary thematic complications. Larkin’s “demand for fidelity to experience is supported by his insistence that poetry should both communicate and give pleasure to the reader,” King noted, adding: “It would be a mistake to dismiss this attitude as a form of simple literary conservatism. Larkin is not so much expressing an anti-intellectualism as attacking a particular form of artistic snobbery.” In  Philip Larkin,  Martin commented that the poet saw the need for poetry to move toward the “paying customer.” Therefore, his writings concretize “many of the questions which have perplexed man almost since his beginning but which in modern times have become the province principally of academicians… [Larkin’s poetry reflects] his faith in the common reader to recognize and respond to traditional philosophical concerns when stripped of undue abstractions and pretentious labels.” Brownjohn found Larkin eminently successful in his aims: “It is indeed true that many of his readers find pleasure and interest in Larkin’s poetry for its apparent accessibility and its cultivation of verse forms that seem reassuringly traditional rather than ‘modernist’ in respect of rhyme and metre.” As Timms succinctly noted, originality for Larkin consisted “not in modifying the medium of communication, but in communicating something different.” “Much that is admirable in the best of [Larkin’s] work is felt [in  Collected Poems ]: firmness and delicacy of cadence, a definite geography, a mutually fortifying congruence between what the language means to say and what it musically embodies,” asserted  Seamus Heaney  in the  Observer.  The collection contains Larkin’s six previous volumes of poetry as well as 83 of his unpublished poems gleaned from notebooks and homemade booklets. The earliest poems (which reflect the style and social concerns of  W.H. Auden ) date from his schooldays and the latest close to his death. Writing in the Chicago  Tribune Books,   Alan Shapiro  pointed out, “Reading the work in total, we can see how Larkin, early and late, is a poet of great and complex feeling.” Larkin “[endowed] the most commonplace objects and occasions with a chilling poignancy, [measuring] daily life with all its tedium and narrowness against the possibilities of feeling,” adds Shapiro. Larkin’s output of fiction and essays is hardly more extensive than his poetry. His two novels,  Jill  and  A Girl in Winter,  were both published before his 25th birthday.  New Statesman  correspondent  Clive James  feels that both novels “seem to point forward to the poetry. Taken in their chronology, they are impressively mature and self-sufficient.” James adds that the fiction is so strong that “if Larkin had never written a line of verse, his place as a writer would still have been secure.” Although the novels received little critical attention when they first appeared, they have since been judged highly successful. Brownjohn called  Jill  “one of the better novels written about England during the Second World War, not so much for any conscious documentary effort put into it as for Larkin’s characteristic scrupulousness in getting all the background details right.” In the  New York Review of Books,  John Bayley noted that  A Girl in Winter  is “a real masterpiece, a quietly gripping novel, dense with the humor that is Larkin’s trademark, and also an extended prose poem.” Larkin’s essay collections,  Required Writing  and  All What Jazz,  are compilations of critical pieces he wrote for periodicals over a 30-year period, including the jazz record reviews he penned as a music critic for the London  Daily Telegraph.  “Everything Larkin writes is concise, elegant and wholly original,” Bayley claimed in the  Listener,  “and this is as true of his essays and reviews as it is of his poetry.” Elsewhere in the  New York Review of Books,  Bayley comments that  Required Writing  “reveals wide sympathies, deep and trenchant perceptions, a subterraneous grasp of the whole of European culture.” And in an essay on  All What Jazz  for Anthony Thwaite’s  Larkin at Sixty,  James concludes that “no wittier book of criticism has ever been written.” Larkin stopped writing poetry shortly after his collection  High Windows  was published in 1974. In an  Observer  obituary, Kingsley Amis characterized the poet as “a man much driven in upon himself, with increasing deafness from early middle age cruelly emphasizing his seclusion.” Small though it is, Larkin’s body of work has “altered our awareness of poetry’s capacity to reflect the contemporary world,” according to  London Magazine  correspondent Roger Garfitt. A.N. Wilson drew a similar conclusion in the  Spectator:  “Perhaps the reason Larkin made such a great name from so small an  oeuvre  was that he so exactly caught the mood of so many of us… Larkin found the perfect voice for expressing our worst fears.” That voice was “stubbornly indigenous,” according to  Robert B. Shaw  in  Poetry Nation.  Larkin appealed primarily to the British sensibility; he remained unencumbered by any compunction to universalize his poems by adopting a less regional idiom. Perhaps as a consequence, his poetry sells remarkably well in Great Britain, his readers come from all walks of life, and his untimely cancer-related death in 1985 has not diminished his popularity. Andrew Sullivan feels that Larkin “has spoken to the English in a language they can readily understand of the profound self-doubt that this century has given them. He was, of all English poets, a laureate too obvious to need official recognition.” In 2002, a notebook containing unpublished poems by Larkin was found in a garbage dump in England, and the notebook’s current owner consulted with auction houses in preparation for selling it. The Society of Authors was to look into legal issues involved in the matter. Then in 2004 came publication of another  Collected Poems,  again edited by Thwaite. While the first  Collected Poems  from 1989 was arranged chronologically, this was not the order that Larkin himself had used when first publishing them. Additionally, Thwaite published previously unpublished poems and fragments in the earlier volume, drawing some criticism from Larkin scholars. With the 2004  Collected Poems,  such matters were corrected. One hundred pages shorter than the earlier volume, and ordered to Larkin’s original desires, this second version “does give the verse itself a better shake,” according to  John Updike  writing in the  New Yorker.  Yet it is hard to please everyone, as Melanie Rehak noted in a  Nation  review. “Just as some quibbled when Thwaite diverged from Larkin’s chosen path in his previous collection,” Rehak noted, “there are absences in this new edition that also diminish it.” However, for Daniel Torday, reviewing the second  Collected Poems  in  Esquire,  the book was a success. “Twenty years after [Larkin’s] death,” wrote Torday, “a newly revised [version]… has arrived to remind us that Larkin was more the man’s poet of the 20th century than [Charles] Bukowski or [Jack] Kerouac.” Torday also felt that Larkin was able to ignore “any audience but himself… That crass, stubborn, and yet unavoidably lovable curmudgeon who tends to poke his head out at the most inopportune times.”

Poet Biographies

Philip Larkin: The Voice of Post-War England

Philip Larkin was a 20th-century English poet, novelist, and librarian. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant voices in post-war British poetry. Larkin’s work addresses themes of love, mortality, and the passing of time.

Philip Larkin was a 20th-century poet who explored the universal themes of love, death, and the effect of time on the human condition. Despite being regarded as one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, Larkin’s life was turbulent and marred with many failed relationships.

One way of looking at Larkin’s poetry is to consider him an anti-romantic, in which he looks at all elements of life, focusing on the bad as well as the good. Larkin once said that “deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth ,” showing that he had a more downbeat angle than many Romantic poets before him. Larkin was also a poet of the people, using colloquial rather than complex, overindulgent language to explain the emotions he was putting across, which made him relatable to a wide variety of readers.

About Philip Larkin

• 1 Early Life
• 2 Education
• 3 Professional Life
• 4 Later Life and Honors
• 6 Influences on Other Poets

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry, England, in August 1922. He was the only son born to parents Sydney and Eva Larkin. Only a few years after Larkin’s birth, the family moved from Radford, Coventry, to a middle-class home near Coventry railway station. His father worked as the city treasurer for a number of years in the mid-1900s, while his mother was seen to be a continually nervous woman who was very much the passive partner in the relationship. Larkin’s father was known for his adoration of literature, particularly that of Ezra Pound and James Joyce , alongside writers like D.H. Lawrence , as well as for his Nazi leanings.

Larkin’s father introduced him to literature at a young age, and his  formal  education was undertaken at home until he reached the age of eight. He had developed a stammer during this time, but that did not stop him from socializing when he was eventually enrolled at Coventry’s King Henry VIII Junior School. Although he was a bright child, Larkin did not do well when he sat for his School Certificate. This turned out to be a blip in an otherwise successful educational career, and he went on to earn distinctions in English and History.

It had been Larkin’s intention, with WWII on the horizon, to join the military, but he was unable to pass the army medical due to his poor eyesight. Instead, Larkin entered university at St. John’s College Oxford in 1940. While enrolled at Oxford, Larkin and a number of his close friends created a group they named “The Seven.” They met to drink, talk, and read one another’s poetry. Larkin graduated in 1943 with a first-class honors degree. This same year three of Philip Larkin’s poems were published in  Oxford Poetry.

Professional Life

After graduation, Larkin moved back in with his parents until he was appointed to a position at the Wellington, Shropshire library. He spent his time engaging in professional studies to become a librarian and expanding his writing practice. At the same time, he met his first real love, Ruth Bowman, who was a 16-year-old student. It was during this time that Larkin wrote his first book of poetry called ‘ The North Ship ,’ featuring poetry such as the same poetry book titled, ‘ The North Ship .’

During the next decade of his life, Larkin would go on to work at a number of university libraries. In 1945, ten of Larkin’s poems were published in  Poetry from Oxford in Wartime.  This publication was followed by two  novels ,  Jill  and  A Girl in Winter.  Larkin’s professional life was developing, as was his relationship with Ruth Bowman. In 1948 he proposed to her, and by 1950, he became a sub-librarian at The Queen’s University of Belfast. Unfortunately, this advancement in his career signaled the end of his relationship with Ruth, and the two went their separate ways that same year.

The following years saw the publication of his collection, ‘ XX Poems,’  as well as the printing of a few individual poems, including ‘ Toads ‘ and ‘ Poetry of Departures .’ He became the Librarian at the University of Hull in 1955, and that same year his collection, ‘The Less Deceived,’ was released. It was this collection that solidified his reputation as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. There was a lull between collections, and his work, ‘ The Whitsun Weddings , ‘ was not released until 1964. After the publication of this volume, Larkin became the  subject  of an arts program titled  Monitor.

Life has a practice of living you, if you don’t live it. Philip Larkin

Later Life and Honors

Over the following years, he was offered an OBE, which he declined, and worked to compile an  anthology  titled  The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English  Verse . Due to the success of this volume, he was awarded a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. He became an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College Oxford and was granted a number of honorary degrees. Larkin was also made a Companion of Literature in 1978 and an Honorary Fellow of the Library Association in 1980. Two years later, the University of Hull granted him a full professorship.

The honors continued to flow in during the final years of his life, including the opportunity to become Poet Laureate, a position he declined. In 1982 he released a collection of his  essays  titled Larkin at Sixty . In the middle of 1985, Larkin entered the hospital for a problem with his throat, which turned out to be oesophageal cancer. He went through an unsuccessful operation to remove his esophagus and died in a hospital in December 1985.

During his life, Larkin was considered to be a straightforward Englishman who took no joy from his fame. After his death, it was discovered that Larkin held some controversially racist and misogynistic positions, but that did not deter the public at large from considering him one of Britain’s best-loved post-war writers. Today, a statue of Larkin can be seen in Kingston upon Hull, commemorating the 25th anniversary of his death. Six years later, in 2016, a plaque acknowledging his achievement was placed in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.

Influences on Other Poets

Philip Larkin’s poetry was influential and inspirational to many poets and writers. His focus on the lives of the masses, the everyday struggle, and his relatable colloquial tone can be seen in the works of other modern poets. One of the clearest comparisons to Larkin’s style would be that of Carol Ann Duffy . Duffy, like Larkin, uses everyday, colloquial language, making her work accessible. 

Other poets that have taken inspiration from Larkin are:

• Don Paterson
• Simon Armitage
• Paul Farley
• Clive James
• Peter Reading

Philip Larkin was known for his excellent anti-romantic poetry during the post-war era. The English poet was considered to be ‘England’s other Poet Laureate’ but never put his name in the hat for the award, and he was a private person. Larkin’s style was associated with colloquial language that made his works highly relatable.

Philip Larkin’s last major poem that received acclaim from literary critics was ‘ Aubade , ‘ which he published in November 1977. Larkin later died in 1985.

There is some debate as to whether Philip Larkin’s poetry and fiction were of a Modernist nature. Some say that Larkin was actually an anti-modernist as he would not associate with highbrow poetry and elitism and wanted clarity in his work, making it relatable to the lower class too. However, many of the themes and emotions discussed by Larkin are of a Modernist ilk, such as religion, realism , isolation, love, nature, social chaos, alienation, boredom, death, time, melancholy, and sex.

Larkin’s poetry has a mix of styles and levels of traditionalism to them. For example, he would use traditional rhyme schemes but would then write in a colloquial tone , addressing anti-Romantic and less traditional topics such as misery, pessimism, sex, and realism .

Towards the end of his life, Larkin had quite a few ailments, such as partial blindness, deafness, and struggled with a stammer for the majority of his life.

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Philip Larkin

Biography of Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

Philip Arthur Larkin was born in Coventry on 9 August 1922, the only son and younger child of Sydney and Eva Larkin. His father was City Treasurer of Coventry from 1922 to 1944, and died from cancer in 1948 at the age of 63. His mother lived to be 91 and died on 17 November 1977. The family lived in Coventry between 1922 and 1940. Larkin attended King Henry VIII School there between 1930 and 1940. His early talent as a writer was shown in his regular contributions to The Coventrian, the school magazine, of which he was joint editor between 1939 and 1940.

In October 1940 Larkin went to St John’s College, Oxford. He failed his army medical as a result of poor eyesight and so was able to complete his degree uninterrupted, graduating with First Class Honours in English in 1943. His close friends at Oxford included Kingsley Amis and Bruce Montgomery, and many of them shared his passion for jazz music. Strongly influenced by, amongst others, Auden , Lawrence and Yeats, Larkin’s literary talent developed rapidly. His first poem to be published in a national weekly was ‘Ultimatum’ in The Listener, 28 November 1940. In June 1943 three of his poems were included in Oxford Poetry 1942-43.

For the first few months after graduating Larkin lived with his parents in their new Warwick home, spending much of his time on his first novel, Jill. Two attempts to get into the Civil Service failed and he eventually applied for, and was appointed to, the post of Librarian at Wellington in Shropshire in November 1943. Despite a full-time job and part-time study to qualify as a professional librarian, he continued to write and publish. Ten poems were included in Poetry from Oxford in Wartime in February 1945. All of these were then included in his own The North Ship later that year. Jill finally appeared a year later, but, like The North Ship, attracted little public comment. His second novel, A Girl in Winter , was completed in May 1945 and published in February 1947, this time attracting several favourable reviews.

Larkin took up a post as Assistant Librarian at the then University College of Leicester in September 1946, where he was in charge of the issue desk and periodicals. He completed his course of professional studies and became an Associate of the Library Association in 1949. From 1 October 1950 he was Sub-Librarian at Queen’s University, Belfast, where his duties involved the supervision of 18 staff. Belfast saw a resurgence of his poetic activity after the rejection of his second poetry collection, In the Grip of Light , in 1948. He had a small collection, XX Poems , privately printed in an edition of 100 copies in 1951 and the Fantasy Press published a pamphlet containing five of his poems in 1954. Other poems were published in various magazines. ‘Toads’ and ‘Poetry of departures’ appeared in Listen issued by the Marvell Press of Hessle near Hull. By coincidence, Larkin’s next book, largely comprising the poems from XX Poems and the Fantasy Press pamphlet, was being prepared by the Marvell Press when he was appointed Librarian to the University of Hull, where he commenced work on 21 March 1955. The Marvell Press book, initially called ‘Various Poems’ was published as The Less Deceived in October of that year, establishing him thereafter in the front rank of modern British poets.

The Library at Hull inherited by Larkin contained 120,000 volumes and employed just 11 staff housed in an assortment of badly designed buildings. Larkin, greatly aided for many years by the support of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor (later Sir) Brynmor Jones, and the boom in British higher education of the late 1950s and 1960s, presided over its transformation during the next two decades. A new purpose-built Library was opened in two stages in 1960 and 1970, and by 1985 there were over 750,000 items in stock, a computerised catalogue and circulation system, and over 80 staff.

In 1964 his next poetry collection, The Whitsun Weddings , was again widely acclaimed and in 1965 he received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Larkin’s continuing interest in jazz was reflected in his monthly record reviews for The Daily Telegraph between 1961 and 1971. A collection of these reviews entitled All What Jazz: a record diary 1961-1968 was published in 1970. Larkin also prepared the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, issued in 1973 and completed after he had held a visiting fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford for two terms in 1970-71.

The last collection of his own poetry, High Windows , appeared in 1974, and consolidated his reputation. However, his poetic output by this time had practically ceased. ‘Aubade’ , his last great poem, appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in December 1977. To colleagues, Larkin wryly referred to The Brynmor Jones Library, 1929-1979: a short account as his ‘last book’. However, Required Writing: miscellaneous pieces 1955-1982, a collection of essays and reviews, was published in November 1983. A best-seller, it won the W.H. Smith Literary Award for 1984.

The numerous other awards received during his later years included many honorary doctorates culminating in one from Oxford University in 1984. He received the CBE in 1975 and the German Shakespeare-Preis in 1976. He was Chairman of the Booker Prize Panel in 1977, was made Companion of Literature in 1978, and from 1980 to 1982 served on the Literature Panel of the Arts Council. The Library Association made him an Honorary Fellow in 1980 and the University of Hull made him a Professor in 1982. In 1984 he was elected to the Board of the British Library, but declined to succeed Sir John Betjeman as Poet Laureate, being unwilling to accept the level of media attention associated with the position.

His last and most highly prized honour was the Order of the Companion of Honour in June 1985, which, sadly, he was unable to receive personally owing to the onset of his terminal illness. He died of cancer on 2 December 1985 aged 63. His Collected Poems , which also included many of his previously unpublished pieces, was published in October 1988 and became an immediate best-seller. The publication of his Selected Letters in October 1992 was the literary event of the year.

Biography By: Archives and Special Collections Brynmor Jones Library

Poems By Philip Larkin

Miscellaneous, collected poems, critical quarterly, early poems, high windows, pocket book of modern poetry, washington square press, copyright 1954, 1958, the less deceived, the new poetry, the night ship, the north ship, the whitsun weddings, xx poems & the less deceived.

Biography of Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was an English poet and one of the most acclaimed poets of the latter half of the 20th century. He attended Oxford, then studied professionally to become a librarian, a career he would retain even as he grew famous for his poetry. His body of work totaled only about 100 pages, a small size, but he nonetheless attained critical acclaim. Larkin had a reputation for being grumpy and glum, and many of his poems deal with sad themes. In 1984, he was offered the position of Poet Laureate, but he declined to take it. In a 2003 Poetry Book Society survey, Larkin was named Britain's best-loved poet of the last 50 years.

Study Guides on Works by Philip Larkin

An arundel tomb philip larkin.

Written around 1956, “An Arundel Tomb” was published in Larkin’s 1964 collection The Whitsun Weddings and is one of his most famous poems. The book was a commercial success by poetry standards. In the poem, the speaker is inspired by seeing a pair...

• Study Guide

Aubade Philip Larkin

An aubade is a poem traditionally set at dawn or early morning, and typically about parting lovers. This “Aubade” doesn’t involve love, however, despite its fitting setting. In the poem, which uses an ABABCCDEED rhyme scheme, the speaker wakes up...

Coming (Philip Larkin poem) Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was born in 1922 and went onto become one of England's best-known writers. Before his success as an author, Larkin worked as a librarian, writing in his spare time.

Larkin has often been praised for his realistic and rather bleak...

Philip Larkin: Poems Philip Larkin

Born in Coventry, England in 1922, Philip Larkin belongs to the particular group of poets who maintained a steady job bringing in a reliable income while devoting his creative energy to his literary pursuits. Larkin’s 9-to-5 job for most of his...

Sunny Prestatyn Philip Larkin

“Sunny Prestatyn” is one of the poems in Philip Larkin’s poetry volume called The Whitsun Weddings, which is a collection of 32 poems published in the United Kingdom by Faber and Faber . The poem was believed to be first published in 1964, though...

Talking in Bed Philip Larkin

The whitsun weddings philip larkin.

“The Whitsun Weddings,” the titular poem of a book by the same name, is perhaps the most-discussed poem by Philip Larkin, known as England’s ‘poet laureate of disappointment.’ With eight stanzas of ten lines each, rhyming like Keatsian odes but...

• Lesson Plan

Philip Larkin as a Movement Poet

Philip Larkin, a well-known poet of the 20th century, is frequently praised for his distinctive style and insightful observations on human nature. Despite the fact that he may not be conventionally connected with any one literary movement such as Romanticism or Modernism, Larkin’s poetry demonstrates characteristics that represent the spirit of movement poetry. Philip Larkin is considered a movement poet due to his  investigation of societal changes, emphasis on the mundane, and powerful depiction of the human condition.

Table of Contents

Background to movement poetry:

In the 1950s and early 1960s, after World War II, Britain saw the emergence of Movement poetry. With an emphasis on clarity, accessibility, and classic forms, the Movement poetry movement was born in response to the then-dominant literary styles and sought to reintroduce poetry into everyday life. Famous poets involved in the Movement include Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn, and Donald Davie, all of whom contributed their own distinctive viewpoints and writing styles. The movement poets had a significant influence on the development of British poetry by emphasizing the ordinary, criticizing romanticism, and valuing traditional craftsmanship.

Read More: Romanticism in English Literature

Societal Changes in Larkin’s poetry:

Philip Larkin’s poetry serves as an empathetic portrayal of the socioeconomic turmoil that occurred in post-World War II Britain. Larkin investigates the changing norms, beliefs, and attitudes of the time with his keen observations and critical eye. He provides insightful observations and captures the essence of a changing society in his verses.

In “High Windows,” Larkin talks about the sexual liberation and evolving views on relationships that arose in the 1960s. The speaker of the poem looks back on his youth and laments the lack of sexual freedom that earlier generations had. Larkin expresses the sentiment of a society embracing newfound openness while lamenting the loss of conventional values and societal restraints.

Read More: Seamus Heaney as a modern poet

“Annus Mirabilis,” which translates to “miracle year” in Latin, is a prime example of Larkin’s examination of societal changes. The poem was composed in 1967, a year noted for both its political unrest and artistic transformation. By contrasting mundane with important events, such the introduction of the first heart transplant and the legalization of homosexuality, Larkin captures the mood of this revolutionary era. He captures the feeling of flux and uncertainty that came with these societal shifts through his vivid language.

Focus on the mundane:

Movement poetry has a strong emphasis on the commonplace and mundane aspects of existence, which is one of its defining characteristics. Larkin succeeds in this respect since his poetry frequently explores the experiences of ordinary people. He investigates the routine activities that frequently go unnoticed or underappreciated, illuminating their importance and capturing the essence of life as we know it.

“The Whitsun Weddings” , a poem by Larkin, serves as an illustration of his emphasis on the commonplace. The poem involves the journey on a train where Larkin sees numerous wedding parties boarding the train. Larkin uncovers the complexity and emotions involved in these seemingly everyday moments by his astute observations and attention to detail. Larkin challenges readers to consider the fleeting nature of life and the universal human experiences that pass beyond social barriers by elevating the commonplace pleasures of taking a train and celebrating weddings.

Read More: Waiting for Godot as an absurd play

Larkin elevates the ordinary with evocative language and powerful imagery, giving his poetry a sense of profundity and resonance. Readers may relate to the common situations he describes because of his meticulous word choice, which produces vivid and sensory descriptions.

In his poem “Toads,” Larkin makes use of imagery to elevate the ordinary experience of going to work every day. He compares the routine of a worker to a toad crouching in a drain as he depicts the boring tasks of a worker. This image conveys a sensation of confinement, implying that even in routine everyday activities, there may be a sense of imprisonment and a desire to flee. By using metaphor, Larkin turns a commonplace event into a potent representation of the conflicts and aspirations that constitute all of human existence.

Portrayal of the Human Condition:

Themes that are fundamental to the human experience, like love, loneliness, and mortality, are explored in-depth by Philip Larkin. His poetry provides a comprehensive examination of these shared emotions, frequently illuminating the intricacies and paradoxes present in human relationships and life.

In the poem “An Arundel Tomb,” Larkin examines the eternal nature of love and how it is portrayed in sculpture. The poem considers the relationship between a sculpture from a medieval tomb and the love it stands for. Even while Larkin accepts the transience of existence and the inevitable fading of love with time, he contends that love still has a powerful presence despite its transient nature.

In the poem “Talking in Bed,” Larkin examines the emotional isolation and distance that can occur inside a relationship. He depicts the emptiness and unspoken sentiments that frequently characterize personal moments, exposing the difficulties and inherent ambiguities of human connection. The depth of Larkin’s understanding of the human mind is demonstrated by his ability to convey unspoken conflict and emotional intricacies within relationships.

Larkin’s poem “This Be the Verse,” in which the speaker faces the difficulties of familial relationships and the inheritance of unhappiness. The poem questions the idealized idea of family life and presents an honest and unpolished viewpoint on the long-term effects of kinship. Larkin’s honest investigation of the intricacies of families is in line with the Movement poetry’s characteristics of realism and rejection of romanticized ideals.

Conclusion:

To conclude we can say that there can be no denying Philip Larkin’s status as a movement poet . He has established himself as one of the leading voices in Movement poetry owing to his distinctive style, focus on the ordinary, and investigation of universal topics. The movement poetry’s fundamental principles of realism, accessibility, and an emphasis on ordinary life are all evident in Larkin’s poetry. Larkin has produced a corpus of work that resonates with readers and continues to influence later generations of poets due to his precise language, vivid imagery, and profound understanding of the human condition.

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• Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was an English librarian, poet, and novelist. Larkin's poems are similar in tone , and his writing style has elements that are easily recognisable. Larkin's poems are usually gloomy and pessimistic,  often dealing with the ordinary: love, marriage, death, and the passage of time. Larkin's poems are bitter and melancholy in their tone , perhaps a reflection of his own personal life and experiences. Let's take a look at Larkin's life and death, poetry, and books.

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Time has transfigured them into    

Untruth. The stone fidelity 

They hardly meant has come to be    

Their final blazon, and to prove    

Our almost-instinct almost true:    

What will survive of us is love. (l.37-42)

Do memories plague their ears like flies? 

They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows. 

Summer by summer all stole away, 

The starting-gates, the crowd and cries - 

All but the unmolesting meadows. 

Almanacked, their names live; they 

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease, 

Or gallop for what must be joy (l.19-26)

The women shared 

The secret like a happy funeral; 

While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared    

At a religious wounding. Free at last, 

And loaded with the sum of all they saw, 

We hurried towards  London , shuffling gouts of steam.    

Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast    

Long shadows over major roads, and for 

Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem 

Just long enough to settle hats and say 

I nearly died, 

A dozen marriages got under way. (l.52-63)

Parting, after about five 

Rehearsals, was an agreement    

That I was too selfish, withdrawn,    

And easily bored to love. 

Well, useful to get that learnt.    

In my wallet are still two snaps 

Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.    

Unlucky charms, perhaps. (l.17-24)

Talking in bed ought to be easiest, 

Lying together there goes back so far, 

An emblem of two people being honest. 

Yet more and more time passes silently. (l.1-4)

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Philip Larkin: biography

Larkin was born to parents Sydney and Eva Larkin in Coventry on 9 August 1922. He had an older sister, Catherine, who was 10 years older than him. They lived in Radford until Larkin was five when the family moved to a place near Coventry railway station. and Sydney was appointed treasurer of the Coventry City Council. Larkin grew up educated at home by his mother and sister.

Larkin attended King Henry VIII Junior School. He then studied English Literature at St John's College, Oxford University between 1940-1943. Larkin's poor eyesight meant he could not complete his military medical examination. Larkin made lasting friendships at Oxford, including celebrated author Kingsley Amis, and started writing his poetry.

Throughout his life, Larkin worked in various libraries. After Oxford, Larkin worked in various librarian positions in Wellington and the University College, Leicester. He became a sub-librarian at the Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1950. These five years of his life are noted to have been some of the most content years of his life.

Larkin was appointed Librarian at the University of Hull between 1955-1974. Larkin worked to computerise records for the entire library stock. He also published the book of poetry The Less Deceived (1955) at this time. The book received critical acclaim and established him as a leading poet of his generation.

The Whitsun Weddings was published in 1964, which propelled his persona into the public light. A lifelong passion for jazz also saw Larkin become a jazz critic for The Daily Telegraph between 1961 and 1971.

Larkin was well known for his poetry, in which Larkin explored ordinary themes in an often pessimistic and gloomy tone. He became an Honorary Fellow of St John's College and was awarded honorary degrees by Warwick, St Andrews, and Sussex universities in 1974.

Philip Larkin: cause of death

Larkin died of oesophageal cancer on 2 December 1985. Larkin is buried in Cottingham, Hull, in the Cottingham Municipal Cemetery.

In 1992, his letters were published posthumously. The letters revealed his right-wing and racist views, and his obsession with pornography, all of which strongly affected his reputation. Andrew Motion's biography Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (2018) further explored these views. However, Larkin is still considered a popular poet in the UK to this day

Philip Larkin: poems

The main poems from Philip Larkin's collections include 'An Arundel Tomb', ' At Grass ', 'Wild Oats', and 'The Whitsun Weddings'.

Philip Larkin: 'An Arundel Tomb'

Written in 1956, Larkin's 'An Arundel Tomb' is inspired by the 14th-century effigy of a medieval countess and earl which Larkin visited in Chichester Cathedral, Sussex. The effigy is of the two holding hands, which had a profound impact on Larkin.

One thing that particularly inspired him about the effigy was the idea that love lasts longer than death, and we see this sense of awe in the speaker's initial reaction to the effigy in the poem. However, the speaker then goes on to question the reasons behind the earl and countess having been marbleised in this way

Was it a search for fame? Was it to reflect tradition? Could they really have imagined that their statue would have lasted this long? Towards the end of the poem, the speaker decides that the effigy is in fact a true reflection of the love between the earl and countess.

Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

Philip Larkin: 'At Grass'

Larkin's ' At Grass ', written in 1950, starts with the speaker observing two animals who are on a field. At first, the speaker struggles to see that they are horses, but we soon come to discover that they are, more specifically, former racehorses. These racehorses are no longer in their prime, nor do they carry the same glory or fame that they once held. To anyone else observing them - they are just regular horses in a field.

The phrase 'at grass' means having been put aside, which is how the speaker views these forgotten horses. The speaker of the poem also notes that the racehorses do not seem at all fazed by this change, instead, they are simply enjoying being horses. It is through this, perhaps, that Larkin hints at the idea that we as humans should also learn how to let go, and in return live simpler happier lives.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?

They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.

Summer by summer all stole away,

The starting-gates, the crowd and cries -

All but the unmolesting meadows.

Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,

Philip Larkin: 'The Whitsun Weddings'

Published in 1964 as the title poem of Larkin's collection of poems, 'The Whitsun Weddings' describes the journey taken by the speaker from Kingston-upon-Hull to London . The speaker observes others who are with them on the train, and in particular, focuses on a newlywed couple.

The speaker contemplates this couple and the commitment they have made to each other, reflecting on ideas of love and marriage. Finally, the speaker arrives at their destination, and the journey from the rural east of England to urban London concludes with a final farewell.

The women shared

The secret like a happy funeral;

While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared

At a religious wounding. Free at last,

And loaded with the sum of all they saw,

We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.

Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast

Long shadows over major roads, and for

Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say

I nearly died,

Philip Larkin: 'Wild Oats'

Larkin's 'Wild Oats' was written in 1962 and can be seen as a reflection on Larkin's own personal life. The work is about the speaker's relationship with two different women, Ruth Bowman and Jane Exall. The title of the poem, 'Wild Oats', is a common euphemism for the sexual freedoms that men are encouraged to explore in their lives.

Many men are roused from young adulthood to have sexual relations with as many women as they want, while women are often looked down upon should they do they same. In 'Wild Oats', the speaker struggles with fidelity and comes to regret his commitment by the end of the poem.

Parting, after about five

Rehearsals, was an agreement

That I was too selfish, withdrawn,

And easily bored to love.

Well, useful to get that learnt.

In my wallet are still two snaps

Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.

Philip Larkin: 'Talking in Bed'

Written in 1960, Larkin's 'Talking in Bed' is about, well, exactly what the title implies. The poem explores the relationship between two lovers who are lying down together in bed, but who cannot talk to each other as easily as they ought to be able to.

There is a sense of loneliness and isolation in the poem, as the speaker contemplates what has led the couple to this point in their relationship.

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,

Lying together there goes back so far,

An emblem of two people being honest.

Philip Larkin: themes

The most common themes in Philip Larkin's poems include love, death, time, and marriage.

Philip Larkin: books

As well as writing poetry, Philip Larkin wrote fiction and non-fiction texts such as Jill and A Girl in Winter.

Philip Larkin: Jill

Larkin's novel Jill , published in 1946, follows the protagonist John Kemp. The novel is set in 1940, in which young, working-class John attends Oxford University. John feels out of place, especially given his own background, and the novel follows his journey through not only education, but also personal growth, and his endeavours into the wider world.

He had thought that once he had found his rooms, he would always have a refuge, a place to retreat and hide in. This was apparently not so. (Ch.1)

Philip Larkin: A Girl in Winter

Published in 1947, Larkin's A Girl in Winter is the tale of protagonist Katherine Lind. Due to war, Katherine Lind finds herself displaced, and becomes an assistant librarian in the town in which she now lives. The coming of age story of a young girl - A Girl in Winter explores themes of love, loneliness, and the loss of innocence.

There was little expression on her face as she closed the door behind her. Indeed, there rarely was ... Yet at other times a faint look of amusement stole into her face, as if with pleasure at the completeness with which she could cover her thoughts. And when she spoke it was with a foreign accent. (Ch.2)

Philip Larkin: Key takeaways

• Larkin was born on 9 August 1922 in Coventry, England. In his life, he was an English librarian, poet, and novelist.
• Throughout his life, Larkin worked in various libraries, the last of which was the library at the University of Hull.
• Larkin's poems are normally very similar in tone: gloomy and pessimistic, holding bitter and melancholy inflexions.
• In his poetry, Philip Larkin often dealt with the ordinary, for example, love, marriage, death, and the passage of time.
• Larkin died of cancer on 2 December 1985, and is buried in Cottingham, in the Cottingham Municipal Cemetery
• Fig. 1 - Statue of Philip Larkin (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Philip_Larkin_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3256198.jpg) by Peter Church (https://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/16649) is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)

Flashcards in Philip Larkin 53

Philip Larkin was born on 9 August 1922. 

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry, England.

Philip Larkin was an English librarian, poet, and novelist 

Among Philip Larkin's most famous poems are 'An Arundel Tomb', 'At Grass', 'The Whitsun Weddings', 'Wild Oats', and 'Talking in Bed' 

Philip Larkin wrote over 200 poems 

Philip Larkin was often considered anti-romantic; his poems are usually gloomy and pessimistic, holding bitter and melancholy inflexions  

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Frequently Asked Questions about Philip Larkin

What is Philip Larkin's most famous poem? 

Among Philip Larkin's most famous poems are 'An Arundel Tomb', 'At Grass', 'The Whitsun Weddings', 'Wild Oat's, and 'Talking in Bed'

What is the contribution of Philip Larkin to poetry? 

Philip Larkin wrote over 200 poems

What is the tone of the poem 'Here' by Philip Larkin? 

The tone in this poem is relaxed and informal

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry (England)

What kind of poet is Philip Larkin? 

Philip Larkin was often considered anti-romantic; his poems are usually gloomy and pessimistic, holding bitter and melancholy inflexions 

Test your knowledge with multiple choice flashcards

_____ is description that appeals to the senses.

_____ is when two things are placed close to each other in order to draw a contrast between them.

Romanticism focused on celebrating nature, spirituality, and the emotions and the imagination of the individual. 

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Philip Larkin Biography and Works

Philip Larkin Biography and Works , Philip Arthur Larkin, born on August 9, 1922, in Coventry, England, is widely regarded as one of the preeminent poets and writers of the 20th century. His literary corpus is distinguished by a unique voice, astute observations, and a profound exploration of the human experience. Larkin’s life and contributions are intricately entwined with the post-war British literary landscape, reflecting the societal changes and cultural shifts of his era.

Raised in Coventry, an industrial city that profoundly influenced his perspective on modernity and urban life, Larkin hailed from a modest middle-class family. The economic hardships of the Great Depression, experienced during his formative years, left an enduring impact on his later writings. His father, Sydney Larkin, served as the city treasurer, while his mother, Eva Emily Day, fostered his early love for literature. Larkin’s academic excellence became evident during his tenure at King Henry VIII School in Coventry, where he excelled in English and displayed a budding passion for poetry.

Continuing his journey at St. John’s College, Oxford, Larkin pursued studies in English language and literature. Oxford provided a fertile ground for intellectual exploration and literary pursuits. Interactions with fellow literary figures, including Kingsley Amis, left an indelible mark on Larkin, shaping his literary sensibilities and fostering enduring friendships. However, his time at Oxford was interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the Royal Air Force from 1943 to 1945. The war’s profound impact influenced the thematic currents of his later works.

Post-war, Larkin resumed his studies at Oxford and eventually embarked on a career in librarianship. In 1950, he assumed the role of librarian at the University of Hull, a position he held until his demise. The academic environment at Hull provided stability and a conducive space for creative expression. Larkin’s role as a librarian underscored his commitment to facilitating access to literature, reflecting his belief in the transformative power of words.

Larkin’s poetic debut occurred with “The North Ship” in 1945, a collection reflecting the influence of W.B. Yeats on his early style. However, it was “The Less Deceived” (1955), his second collection, that thrust him into the literary limelight. The title encapsulates Larkin’s nuanced exploration of disillusionment, a theme pervasive in his work. Well-received for its clarity of language and acute observations, the collection established Larkin as a prominent voice in post-war poetry.

In subsequent years, Larkin produced notable poetry collections, including “The Whitsun Weddings” (1964) and “High Windows” (1974). These works delve into the complexities of love, mortality, and the passage of time, illustrating Larkin’s preoccupation with the human condition. His poems, marked by a blend of wit and melancholy, capture everyday life with a keen eye for detail. Larkin’s accessible and rhythmic poetic language resonated with a broad readership, solidifying his reputation as a poet for the people.

Beyond poetry, Larkin made significant contributions to prose. His critical essays and reviews, compiled in volumes such as “All What Jazz: A Record Diary” (1970) and “Required Writing” (1983), showcase his incisive literary analysis and wit. Larkin’s prose writings offer insights into his views on literature, culture, and the role of the artist in society.

Larkin’s personal life, often shielded from public scrutiny, adds complexity to his public persona. His romantic relationships, notably with Monica Jones and Maeve Brennan, colleagues at the Hull University library, have been subjects of speculation. Themes of love, loneliness, and human connection in his poetry intersect with the intricacies of his personal life.

Larkin’s impact extends beyond his individual works. As the librarian at the University of Hull, he played a pivotal role in fostering a literary community, supporting emerging writers like Kingsley Amis and Barbara Pym. The Philip Larkin Prize, established in his honor, celebrates outstanding young poets and underscores his enduring legacy as a mentor and advocate for literature.

However, Larkin’s legacy is not without controversy. Revelations about his private correspondence and personal beliefs in the latter part of his life sparked debates about his political views and attitudes towards race and gender. Scrutiny of his letters revealed elements of conservatism and skepticism towards societal changes, prompting a reevaluation of his work in contemporary discussions on inclusivity and social justice.

In conclusion, Philip Larkin stands as a towering figure in 20th-century literature, leaving an indelible mark with his poetry and prose. His exploration of the human experience, coupled with a keen sense of observation and mastery of language, resonates across generations. Larkin’s life journey, from the industrial landscapes of Coventry to the academic haven of Hull, shaped his worldview and informed his literary creations. Despite the complexities of his legacy, the enduring power of Larkin’s words ensures his significance in the canon of English literature.

Table of Contents

Philip Larkin Famous Poems

Philip Larkin, renowned for his poignant and often reflective poetry, left an enduring legacy with several famous and widely studied poems that continue to resonate with readers. Here, we explore some of his most notable works:

• “Church Going” (1955): In “Church Going,” Larkin reflects on the role of religion in contemporary society. The poem begins with the speaker entering a deserted church, contemplating its significance and pondering the future of such religious institutions. Larkin explores themes of spirituality, tradition, and the enduring human need for a sense of sacred space.
• “This Be The Verse” (1971): Arguably one of Larkin’s most famous and controversial poems, “This Be The Verse” opens with the memorable lines, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” The poem delves into the idea of how familial and societal influences shape individuals and impact their lives. Larkin’s candid and irreverent language captures the complexities of family relationships.
• “The Whitsun Weddings” (1964): The title poem of one of Larkin’s collections, “The Whitsun Weddings,” narrates a train journey on a Whitsun weekend, observing wedding parties at various stops. Through vivid imagery and keen observations, Larkin explores the themes of love, marriage, and the transient nature of human connections. The poem is celebrated for its evocative depiction of a pivotal moment in time.
• “Toads” (1955): “Toads” is a two-part poem where Larkin contrasts the lives of those who choose routine and security (representing the metaphorical “toad”) with those who pursue their passions and dreams. The poem reflects Larkin’s skepticism towards the monotony of conventional life and the compromises people make in the pursuit of comfort.
• “An Arundel Tomb” (1964): In this contemplative poem, Larkin reflects on the permanence of love and memory. The poem is inspired by the tomb of Richard Fitzalan and his wife Eleanor in Arundel Cathedral. Larkin explores the idea that even in death, the physical presence of a monument can convey a sense of enduring love and connection.
• “MCMXIV” (1964): Written in the context of World War I, “MCMXIV” (1914 in Roman numerals) captures the atmosphere of pre-war England, depicting a world on the brink of change. Larkin reflects on the innocence of a generation before the war’s profound impact, emphasizing the loss of an idyllic past and the inevitability of societal transformation.

“Aubade” (1977): “Aubade” is a meditation on mortality and the fear of death. Larkin explores the existential dread that often accompanies the awareness of our own finite existence. The poem is a stark and introspective piece that delves into the darkness of the human psyche, contemplating the void that death represents.

What was Philip Larkin’s writing style?

Accessible Language: Larkin’s poetry is known for its accessibility. He eschews complex, ornate language in favor of a more straightforward and conversational style. This accessibility allows a broad readership to engage with his work, contributing to his popularity.

• Everyday Subjects: Larkin often draws inspiration from mundane, everyday experiences. His poems frequently explore ordinary moments and situations, transforming them into profound reflections on life, love, and mortality. This choice of subject matter contributes to the relatability of his poetry.
• Wit and Irony: Larkin’s writing is characterized by a sharp wit and a penchant for irony. He often employs humor to underscore deeper, sometimes darker, truths about the human condition. This combination of wit and irony adds layers of complexity to his verses.
• Observational Precision: Larkin’s poems are marked by meticulous observation and attention to detail. He captures scenes with vivid imagery and precision, allowing readers to visualize and connect with the landscapes, people, and moments he describes. This observational skill enhances the authenticity of his work.
• Exploration of Human Experience: Larkin’s poetry delves into the complexities of the human experience. He explores themes such as love, loneliness, disillusionment, and the passage of time with a profound and often contemplative lens. His keen understanding of the human psyche contributes to the emotional resonance of his poems.
• Free Verse and Traditional Forms: While Larkin is associated with free verse, he also employs traditional poetic forms. His versatility is evident in his use of rhyme and meter when the structure serves the thematic elements of a particular poem. This willingness to adapt his form to the needs of each poem showcases his mastery of craft.
• Pessimism and Realism: Larkin’s writing often exhibits a sense of pessimism and realism. He confronts the harsh realities of life, acknowledging the inevitability of death, the transience of joy, and the disappointments inherent in human relationships. This candid exploration of darker themes distinguishes his work.

Conciseness: Larkin’s poems are often concise, yet they carry immense depth. He has a knack for distilling complex emotions and ideas into succinct verses, making each word count. This economy of language contributes to the impact of his poetry.

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Five Fascinating Facts about Philip Larkin

Interesting facts from Larkin’s life

1. Philip Larkin wrote a number of stories featuring girls at boarding school.

While he was completing his English degree at St John’s College, Oxford in 1943, Larkin started writing stories and poems – and even a whole novella, Trouble at Willow Gables – under the pseudonym Brunette Coleman. The stories very much parody girls’ boarding-school stories of the time, which Larkin considered too flat and passionless when it came to treating the awakening of romantic and erotic feelings (specifically, homoerotic feelings) in adolescent girls.

As Larkin put it to a letter to a friend in June 1943, ‘I am spending my time doing an obscene Lesbian novel in the form of a school story.’

2. Larkin and Kingsley Amis always signed off their letters to each other with the word ‘bum’.

Larkin and Amis met at the University of Oxford in the early 1940s, and became firm friends, united by their sense of humour as well as their literary ambitions (not to mention their dislike of the medieval literature they were made to study, and their hatred of J. R. R. Tolkien’s lectures on the subject).

Amis wanted to be a poet but ended up being a novelist (launching a successful career with his 1954 novel Lucky Jim , whose hero is loosely based on Larkin himself), while Larkin, conversely, dreamed of being a great novelist but ended up as a poet.

Larkin himself defined the distinction between the novelist and the poet as follows: ‘If you tell a novelist, “Life’s not like that”, he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, “No, but I am.”‘ He also memorably said, ‘The notion of expressing sentiments in short lines having similar sounds at their ends seems as remote as mangoes on the moon.’

3. Philip Larkin was a huge Beatrix Potter fan.

This may come as a surprise, given Larkin’s lugubriousness, but he and long-term girlfriend Monica Jones shared an intense fondness for Beatrix Potter’s tales of Peter Rabbit, Flopsy Bunny, and Mrs Tiggywinkle. And, much as Larkin would sign off his letters to Kingsley Amis with ‘bum’, he would frequently address Monica, in his letters to her, as ‘Bun’ – a reference to Beatrix Potter’s bunnies.

Larkin would also often illustrate his letters to Monica, as well as the manuscripts for his poems, with drawings of bunny rabbits. He also, of course, wrote a memorable poem about the rabbits killed in the 1950s in order to control the population in Britain. You can read ‘Myxomatosis’ here .

4. Larkin used to mow the lawn wearing a D. H. Lawrence T-shirt.

This surprising fact from Larkin’s life appeals to us here: because of the connection between two major twentieth-century writers, because the image of Larkin wearing a T-shirt of any kind seems odd. Larkin bought the T-shirt when he opened an exhibition about Lawrence’s life and work at Nottingham University in 1980.

Lawrence’s depictions of mining communities would help to inspire Larkin’s poem ‘ The Explosion ’. And, on the topic of mowing the lawn, Larkin would write about this in his late poem ‘The Mower’ , about his accidental killing of a hedgehog; Larkin the Lawrence-clad grass-cutter would also, of course, write a poem called ‘ Cut Grass ’.

5. He thought he was going to lose his job as a librarian in 1958 – because of his love of pornography.

Larkin was a librarian as well as a writer – and so joined a long line of distinguished authors who have also lent books as well as written them. Jacob Grimm, Casanova, David Hume, Jorge Luis Borges, Archibald MacLeish, and Lewis Carroll also worked as librarians.

In 1958, as recorded by James Booth in his Larkin biography, Larkin received a letter from the Vice Squad informing him that he had been identified as the subscriber to a pornographic magazine, and could face prosecution.

In fact, the letter turned out to be a hoax, sent by his friend (and fellow porn-enthusiast) Robert Conquest. When he was first included in Who’s Who , in 1959, Larkin listed his profession as ‘librarian’ on the basis that a man is what he is paid to do. Poetry was secondary to that.

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7 thoughts on “Five Fascinating Facts about Philip Larkin”

Reblogged this on Recommended book and blog news, poetry and tarot inspiration .

Thank you for bringing this man’s work to my attention and for providing the link to ‘Myxomatosis’. What a chilling, beautifully crafted, poem. Living in a country where, ‘the Easter Bunny caught Myxo’ is a well known joke, it is particularly poignant.

I never knew there was such a thing as a DH Lawrence T-shirt!

Lawrence would be turning in his urn!

I would never have thought to associate pornography with Larkin, but then the bigger shock was that Robert Conquest was a fan as well!

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Philip Larkin

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Philip larkin , the art of poetry no. 30, issue 84, summer 1982.

“Temperamentally and geographically remote,” the  Times Literary Supplement  wrote of Philip Larkin, “he has refused almost all invitations to judge, recite, review, lecture, pontificate, or to be interviewed.”

When the notion of securing a  Paris Review  interview with Larkin arose, the staff was not sanguine. Much to the staff’s delight, Larkin consented warily, stating that he wasn’t crazy about the idea, but that “ The Paris Review  series is, of course, known to me, and I can see I should be in good company.” In the case of this interview, Larkin did not let down his guard sufficiently to be interviewed in person. He stipulated that the interview be conducted entirely by mail: “You will get much better answers that way.” He took nearly five months to answer the initial set of questions sent to him at his home in Hull, England, stating, “It has taken rather a long time because, to my surprise, I found writing it suffocatingly boring.”

His letterhead,  P. A. Larkin, C.B.E., C.Lit., M.A., D.Lit., D.Litt., F.R.S.L., F.L.A. , is indicative of the measure of worldly recognition his relatively small output has received. Indeed, he has been called the other English poet laureate (“even more loved and needed than the official one, John Betjeman,” according to Calvin Bedient in  The New York Times Book Review ). But Larkin transcends his Englishness, and is widely read on the Continent and in the United States.

He has said his aim in writing a poem is “to construct a verbal device that would preserve an experience indefinitely by reproducing it in whoever read the poem.”

INTERVIEWER

Can you describe your life at Hull? Do you live in a flat or own a house?

PHILIP LARKIN

I came to Hull in 1955. After eighteen months (during which I wrote “Mr. Bleaney”), I took a University flat and lived there for nearly eighteen years. It was the top flat in a house that was reputedly the American Consulate during the war, and though it might not have suited everybody, it suited me. I wrote most of  The Whitsun Weddings  and all of  High Windows  there. Probably I should never have moved if the University hadn’t decided to sell the house, but as it was I had to get out and find somewhere else. It was a dreadful experience, as at that time houses were hard to find. In the end friends reported a small house near the University, and I bought that in 1974. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I like it.

How many days a week do you work at the library, and for how many hours a day?

 LARKIN

My job as University librarian is a full-time one, five days a week, forty-five weeks a year. When I came to Hull, I had eleven staff; now there are over a hundred of one sort and another. We built one new library in 1960 and another in 1970, so that my first fifteen years were busy. Of course, this was a period of university expansion in England, and Hull grew as much as if not more than the rest. Luckily the vice-chancellor during most of this time was keen on the library, which is why it is called after him. Looking back, I think that if the Brynmor Jones Library  is  a good library—and I think it is—the credit should go to him and to the library staff. And to the University as a whole, of course. But you wouldn’t be interested in all that.

 INTERVIEWER

What is your daily routine?

My life is as simple as I can make it. Work all day, cook, eat, wash up, telephone, hack writing, drink, television in the evenings. I almost never go out. I suppose everyone tries to ignore the passing of time: some people by doing a lot, being in California one year and Japan the next; or there’s my way—making every day and every year exactly the same. Probably neither works.

You didn’t mention a schedule for writing . . .

Yes, I was afraid you’d ask about writing. Anything I say about writing poems is bound to be retrospective, because in fact I’ve written very little since moving into this house, or since  High Windows , or since 1974, whichever way you like to put it. But when I did write them, well, it was in the evenings, after work, after washing up (I’m sorry: you would call this “doing the dishes”). It was a routine like any other. And really it worked very well: I don’t think you can write a poem for more than two hours. After that you’re going round in circles, and it’s much better to leave it for twenty-four hours, by which time your subconscious or whatever has solved the block and you’re ready to go on.

The best writing conditions I ever had were in Belfast, when I was working at the University there. Another top-floor flat, by the way. I wrote between eight and ten in the evenings, then went to the University bar till eleven, then played cards or talked with friends till one or two. The first part of the evening had the second part to look forward to, and I could enjoy the second part with a clear conscience because I’d done my two hours. I can’t seem to organize that now.

Does, or did, writing come easily for you? Does a poem get completed slowly or rapidly?

I’ve no standards of comparison. I wrote short poems quite quickly. Longer ones would take weeks or even months. I used to find that I was never sure I was going to finish a poem until I had thought of the last line. Of course, the last line was sometimes the first one you thought of! But usually the last line would come when I’d done about two-thirds of the poem, and then it was just a matter of closing the gap.

Why do you write, and for whom?

You’ve been reading Auden: “To ask the hard question is simple.” The short answer is that you write because you have to. If you rationalize it, it seems as if you’ve seen this sight, felt this feeling, had this vision, and have got to find a combination of words that will preserve it by setting it off in other people. The duty is to the original experience. It doesn’t feel like self-expression, though it may look like it. As for  whom  you write for, well, you write for everybody. Or anybody who will listen.

Do you share your manuscripts with anyone before publishing them? Are there any friends whose advice you would follow in revising a poem?

I shouldn’t normally show what I’d written to anyone: what would be the point? You remember Tennyson reading an unpublished poem to Jowett; when he had finished, Jowett said, “I shouldn’t publish that if I were you, Tennyson.” Tennyson replied, “If it comes to that, Master, the sherry you gave us at lunch was downright filthy.” That’s about all that can happen.

But when we were young, Kingsley Amis and I used to exchange unpublished poems, largely because we never thought they could be published, I suppose. He encouraged me, I encouraged him. Encouragement is very necessary to a young writer. But it’s hard to find anyone worth encouraging: there aren’t many Kingsleys about.

In his  Paris Review  interview, Kingsley Amis states you helped him with the manuscript of  Lucky Jim . What was the nature of that working relationship? Is part of that novel based upon your own experiences on staff at Leicester University?

Well, it’s all so long ago, it’s hard to remember. My general conviction was that Kingsley was quite the funniest writer I had ever met—in letters and so on—and I wanted everyone else to think so too. I know he says he got the idea of  Lucky Jim  from visiting me when I was working at University College Leicester. This has always seemed rather tenuous to me: after all, he was working at University College Swansea when he was writing it, and the theme—boy meets apparently nasty girl, but turns her into a nice girl by getting her away from nasty environment—is one I think has always meant a lot to Kingsley. He used it again in  I Want It Now . When I read the first draft I said, Cut this, cut that, let’s have more of the other. I remember I said, Let’s have more “faces”—you know, his Edith Sitwell face, and so on. The wonderful thing was that Kingsley could “do” all those faces himself—“Sex Life in Ancient Rome” and so on. Someone once took photographs of them all. I wish I had a set.

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The Paris Review Podcast returns with a new season, featuring the best interviews, fiction, essays, and poetry from America’s most legendary literary quarterly, brought to life in sound. Join us for intimate conversations with Sharon Olds and Olga Tokarczuk; fiction by Rivers Solomon, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and Zach Williams; poems by Terrance Hayes and Maggie Millner; nonfiction by Robert Glück, Jean Garnett, and Sean Thor Conroe; and performances by George Takei, Lena Waithe, and many others. Catch up on earlier seasons, and listen to the trailer for Season 4 now.

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The Art of Editing No. 4

By the time I arrived in New York in the late seventies, Lapham was established in the city’s editorial elite, up there with William Shawn at The New Yorker and Barbara Epstein and Bob Silvers at The New York Review of Books . He was a glamorous fixture at literary parties and a regular at Elaine’s. In 1988, he raised plutocratic hackles by publishing Money and Class in America , a mordant indictment of our obsession with wealth. For a brief but glorious couple of years, he hosted a literary chat show on public TV called Bookmark , trading repartee with guests such as Joyce Carol Oates, Gore Vidal, Alison Lurie, and Edward Said. All the while, a new issue of Harper’s would hit the newsstands every month, with a lead essay by Lapham that couched his erudite observations on American society and politics in Augustan prose.

Today Lapham is the rare surviving eminence from that literary world. But he has managed to keep a handsome bit of it alive—so I observed when I went to interview him last summer in the offices of Lapham’s , a book-filled, crepuscular warren on a high floor of an old building just off Union Square. There he presides over a compact but bustling editorial operation, with an improbably youthful crew of subeditors. One LQ intern, who had also done stints at other magazines, told me that Lapham was singular among top editors for the personal attention he showed to each member of his staff.

Our conversation took place over several sessions, each around ninety minutes. Despite the heat, he was always impeccably attired: well-tailored blue blazer, silk tie, cuff links, and elegant loafers with no socks. He speaks in a relaxed baritone, punctuated by an occasional cough of almost orchestral resonance—a product, perhaps, of the Parliaments he is always dashing outside to smoke. The frequency with which he chuckles attests to a vision of life that is essentially comic, in which the most pervasive evils are folly and pretension.

I was familiar with such aspects of the Lapham persona. But what surprised me was his candid revelation of the struggle and self-doubt that lay behind what I had imagined to be his effortlessness. Those essays, so coolly modulated and intellectually assured, are the outcome of a creative process filled with arduous redrafting, rejiggering, revision, and last-minute amendment in the teeth of the printing press. And it is a creative process that always begins—as it did with his model, Montaigne—not with a dogmatic axiom to be unpacked but in a state of skeptical self-questioning: What do I really know? If there a unifying core to Lapham’s dual career as an editor and an essayist, that may be it.

— Jim Holt

From the Archive, Issue 229

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