Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Philip Larkin
-
Standard Name: Larkin, Philip
Birth Name: Philip Arthur Larkin
PL
is now widely regarded as one of the leading English poets of the later twentieth century. His output was small and his chosen form is brief, tightly structured, rhyming and self-contained, using a demotic vocabulary of deceptive simplicity. Though he often expresses brief, exuberant joy, he also returns again and again to the prospect of personal death, and the general tone of his poems is downbeat. He also published two novels as well as volumes of his reviews (of jazz and books), and other occasional prose writings.
EJ
was a twentieth-century English poet writing on family, literary, and religious subjects. Peter Levi
calls her maybe the last poet of what may be called the soul.
The Ship. St Anne’s College.
92: 54
Early in her career she...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jennings
She had a remarkably catholic talent for friendship. During her student days she became a friend of Philip Larkin
and Kingsley Amis
. Her correspondents at this and later periods of her life included her...
Reception
Elizabeth Jennings
In the Times Literary SupplementPeter Redgrove
welcomed EJ
as a good rather than a great poet, lyrical, metaphysical, and psychologically penetrating, a very accomplished writer of short pieces.
Delay became a popular poem. It was selected twenty years after publication, by Philip Larkin
, for The New Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Verse, and years later again to appear among the advertising placards...
She held bursaries or grants from the Arts Council
(after the initial one for her first book) in 1965, 1968, and 1972.
“Lauinger Library: Special Collections Division”. Georgetown University Library.
Some critics disparage EJ
's work along lines effectively summarized by Robert Crawford
Textual Production
L. T. Meade
LTM
published A Sweet Girl-Graduate, whose title (originally from Tennyson
's The Princess) has been much used by other writers).
The words of the title have featured in a sentimental poem by Helen Steiner Rice
Textual Features
Alice Meynell
The Rainy Summer exemplifies her lively descriptions of landscape; it ends, Bees, humming in the storm, carry their cold / Wild honey to cold cells.
Larkin, Philip, editor. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Clarendon Press.
34
Philip Larkin
chose this poem (his only selection from...
Reception
Susan Miles
The Times Literary Supplement said that Little Mirrors would move the reader not by any particular charm in the clear and modestly modern verse, but by SM
's point of view, her quick observation...
Reception
Iris Murdoch
It is not clear why Philip Larkin
and Monica Jones
chose a copy of this novel for systematically defacing every page with childishly salacious alterations and insertions (lips were parted, for instance, became...
Textual Features
E. Nesbit
The title, condensed from two lines in Wordsworth
's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, alludes to the dimming and flattening of once-acute sensations. One of these poems says that Love can never be...
Author summary
Ruth Pitter
During a career that spanned the greater part of the twentieth century, RP
published eighteen collections of poetry. She left letters and a journal, and occasionally spoke or wrote on literary topics. Her admirers have...
Reception
Ruth Pitter
During her lifetime RP
was deeply appreciated by some readers. C. S. Lewis
scatters through his letters such remarks as Whenever I re-read your poems, I blame myself for not re-reading them oftener.
King, Don W. “The Anatomy of a Friendship: the correspondence of Ruth Pitter and C. S. Lewis, 1946-1962: Mythlore, Summer 2003”. Findarticles.
Philip Larkin
's letter to BP
expressing admiration for No Fond Return of Love began a lifelong correspondence of mutual critique and appreciation.
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press.
31
Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye. Editors Holt, Hazel and Hilary Pym, Macmillan.
201, 291, 334
Reception
Barbara Pym
BP
was the only living writer named as under-rated by two people, Philip Larkin
and Lord David Cecil
, in a list compiled by the Times Literary Supplement of the most over- and under-rated authors...
