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.
A note in the volume explains that it reprints the published contents of Twenty and adds only those poems which the author herself had selected for publication from her other works.
qtd. in
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
From it Philip Larkin
Anthologization
E. J. Scovell
This volume adds new poems to some reprinted. To the same year belongs her often-quoted comment: I should like the surface [of her poetry] to be entirely clear, and the meaning entirely implicit.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
From this...
Anthologization
E. J. Scovell
EJS
has been much anthologised: in Geoffrey Grigson
's Poetry of the Present: An Anthology of the Thirties and After, 1949, and more recently in collections edited by Fleur Adcock
, Philip Larkin
,...
Anthologization
Kathleen Raine
These poems were written on the border between England and Scotland, or in Scotland itself, over a three-year period.
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 20. Gale Research, 1983.
20: 294
Philip Larkin
included two of them, The World and Two Invocations of Death...
Anthologization
Dorothy Wellesley
Horses, having gone forward into Poems of Ten Years, 1924-1934, was selected by W. B. Yeats
for The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1935, and by Philip Larkin
for The Oxford Book...
Friends, Associates
Barbara Pym
Philip Larkin
's letter to BP
expressing admiration for No Fond Return of Love began a lifelong correspondence of mutual critique and appreciation.
Allen, Orphia Jane. Barbara Pym: Writing a Life. Scarecrow Press, 1994.
31
Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye. Editors Holt, Hazel and Hilary Pym, Macmillan, 1984.
201, 291, 334
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jennings
She had a remarkably catholic talent for friendship. During her student days she became a friend of Philip Larkin
and Kingsley Amis
. Her correspondents at this and later periods of her life included her...
Friends, Associates
Barbara Pym
In a letter to Philip Larkin
, Pym remarked, Iris was much smaller than I imagined—I'd always thought of her as tall, but I seemed to tower above her (though only in height, of course)...
Health
Barbara Pym
Her cancer was diagnosed early, a fact of which she was appreciative. In a letter to Philip Larkin
two months after her operation she wrote that the tumour was luckily caught when very small so...
Intertextuality and Influence
Carol Shields
She took up poetry by a strangely roundabout route. Having noticed that in novels she read the female characters were hopelessly unlifelike, she was forcibly struck by an honest portrayal of a woman produced by...
Intertextuality and Influence
Wendy Cope
WC
says she has been influenced by Gilbert
and Sullivan
(one of whose patter songs provides the template for At 70: Of fitness and vitality I am not the epitome) and by Philip Larkin
Intertextuality and Influence
Carol Rumens
The first item in the collection invokes Eugenio Montale
as a poet of the minute detail as well as the historical vision (which, says a reviewer, effectively describes her own practice). Philip Larkin
is also...
UAF
was anthologized by Adrian Barlow
in Calling Kindred: Poems from the English Speaking World, 1993. At Poetry International 2000, she chose Robert Browning
as her Presiding Spirit.
qtd. in
Connolly, Sally. “Woolly whispers of the past”. Times Literary Supplement, 13 Apr. 2001, p. 25.
25
Other influences she claimed are...
Intertextuality and Influence
Dorothy Wellesley
Horses did a great deal to ensure DW
's continuing reputation. Yeats
particularly praised the lines on the wild grey asses fleet / With stripe from head to tail, and moderate ears.
qtd. in
Yeats, W. B., and Dorothy Wellesley. “Introduction”. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, Macmillan, 1936, p. vii - xv.
ix
The reader's...
Timeline
14 January 1956: D. J. Enright's anthology Poets of the 1950s...
Writing climate item
14 January 1956
D. J. Enright
's anthology Poets of the 1950s brought together work by eight poets generally taken to be leading voices in the recently-catagorized, modern but anti-modernist Movement.
Collini, Stefan. “Self-Positioning”. London Review of Books, Vol.
31
, No. 12, 25 June 2009, pp. 17-19.
17
Motion, Andrew. Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life. Faber and Faber, 1993.
273
1963: Jenny Joseph published New Poems, 1963, which...
Women writers item
1963
Jenny Joseph
published New Poems, 1963, which is famous for just one piece, the poem entitled Warning, which begins, When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.
Larkin, Philip, editor. The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Guild Publishing, 1984.
609-10
The Poetry Archive. 2005, http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do.
June 1965: The poet Michael Horovitz successfully brought...
Writing climate item
June 1965
The poet Michael Horovitz
successfully brought poetry to a mass audience at the Albert Hall in London for a poetry festival evening of reading by Underground poets, jazz poets, Liverpool poets, and protest poets.
Drabble, Margaret. “Pressure to Perform”. The Author, Vol.
cxii
, No. 4, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2001, pp. 162-4.
163
10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...
Writing climate item
10 September 2003
Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.
“Poetry Society News: News Archive”. The Poetry Society, London.
Texts
Larkin, Philip. A Girl in Winter. Faber and Faber, 1947.
Larkin, Philip. All What Jazz: a record diary 1961-68. Faber and Faber, 1970.
Larkin, Philip. “Aubade”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1491.
Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. Editor Thwaite, Anthony, Faber and Faber; the Marvell Press, 2003.
Larkin, Philip. High Windows. Faber and Faber, 1974.
Larkin, Philip, and Rodney Fitzgerald. Incidents from Phippy’s Schooldays. Editors Allen, Brenda and James Acheson, Juvenilia Press, 2002.
Larkin, Philip. “Introduction”. Collected Poems, edited by Anthony Thwaite, Faber and Faber; the Marvell Press, 2003, p. xi - xii.