Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
John Betjeman
-
Standard Name: Betjeman, John
JB
was a writer of popular, plangent, often nostalgic poems, who served as Poet Laureate from 1969. He also published an autobiography in blank verse, a novel about a teddy bear, and books and articles on architecture.
Lord, Graham. John Mortimer, The Devil’s Advocate. The Unauthorised Biography. Orion.
69
and received accolades from reviewers for its brilliantly successful attack on . . . the spiritual and physical relationship of married life.
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time Too: 1940-1978. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
50
John Betjeman
called it...
Literary responses
Iris Murdoch
For a first publication, this garnered much positive comment. While The Guardian, Sir John Betjeman
in the Daily Telegraph, and Angus Wilson
in the Observer were comparatively unappreciative, Kingsley Amis
in The Spectator...
Friends, Associates
Julia O'Faolain
Living in different countries, JOF
has moved in different literary circles, not all Irish or English. In Florence she and her husband were welcomed into the circle of the cosmopolitan writer Violet Trefusis
at Villa...
Reception
Kathleen Raine
She stood as a candidate for election as Professor of Poetry at Oxford
in 1968, but was unsuccessful. (Four years later John Betjeman
told her that she would have been a better choice for Poet...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
G. B. Stern
She begins by quoting in its entirety Robert Browning
's poem entitled Memorabilia, which as she observes is better known by its opening line, Ah, did you once see Shelley
plain?
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery.
prelims
She approaches...
Textual Production
Iris Tree
John Betjeman
(who became Poet Laureate in 1972) writes in his introduction to IT
's long poem The Marsh Picnic, 1966, that she had published another volume of poems in 1919 under the title...
Publishing
Iris Tree
Poet John Betjeman
wrote a short biographical introduction for the poem, in which he refers to its having been passed around privately before publication. Story has it that the book was finally published at the...
Literary responses
Iris Tree
In his introduction Betjeman
calls the poem strangely haunting, and judges that It belongs to the age of the 1920's [sic] and early 30's [sic], both in phraseology and outlook. According to him, it is...