Philip Larkin

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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.

Milestones

9 August 1922

PL was born at 2 Poultney Road, Radford, near Coventry, the much younger of two children.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1933

PL was only eleven when he first reached print, with a contribution to his school magazine, The Coventrian, which Anthony Thwaite has called an extraordinarily assured, facetious performance
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
in his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Larkin.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

January 1984

Poetry Review carried PL 's final poem to reach print, Party Politics, an inconsequential two quatrains about the best way of ensuring your glass gets refilled at a drinks party.
Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. Editor Thwaite, Anthony, Faber and Faber; the Marvell Press.
210, 198

2 December 1985

PL died of cancer during those early hours of the morning which he had written that he hated and dreaded, at the Nuffield Hospital in Hull.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

His parents named him Philip after the poet Sir Philip Sidney .
Motion, Andrew. Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life. Faber and Faber.
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Birth and Family

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