Philip Larkin

09 August 1922 - 02 December 1985

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.

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Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Literary responses	T. S. Eliot	During TSE 's last years he reaped a rich harvest of public honours, both in Britain and internationally. Since then his standing as leading poet of the modernist movement and dominant figure of twentieth-century English...
Literary responses	Kathleen Raine	When this book appeared, Philip Larkin called Raine's work vatic and universal. qtd. in Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/. Its appearance offered an oppportunity for critics retrospectively to assess poetry from KR 's first four volumes. They praised her rare objectivity, clarity...
Literary responses	Evelyn Waugh	Most reviews were mocking in tone, in keeping with the late image of Waugh as a kind of Colonel Blimp. Philip Larkin wrote that to be one of his correspondents one would have to have...
Literary responses	Evelyn Waugh	Yet at Waugh's death Larkin had written: It's very hard for me to imagine a world without Evelyn Waugh—he was one of the few really good living writers, & is a great loss. Brennan, Maeve. The Philip Larkin I Knew. Manchester University Press, 2002. 186
Literary responses	Barbara Pym	The sales of this second novel nearly doubled those of Pym's first: Excellent Women sold 5,477 copies in the two months to June 1952, while Some Tame Gazelle sold only 3,722 in the thirteen years...
Literary responses	Elizabeth Jennings	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
Literary responses	Barbara Pym	This became BP 's most widely-reviewed text, and received a mixed reception. Robert Liddell was again outraged, calling this a dreadful book which had only been made possible by the betrayal of Pym's friends in...
Literary responses	Alice Oswald	David Wheatley responded to this poem by establishing it as a landmark in the broadest literary landscape. He compared Oswald in some detail with Joyce (another writer much possessed by water). He rejoiced at her...
Literary responses	Frances Cornford	The writer E. Nesbit particularly admired The Watch and wished, on her deathbed, that she had written it herself. Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1924. Hutchinson, 1987. 392 Philip Larkin included both of these among the four of Cornford's poems that he chose...
Occupation	Frances Horovitz	Patrick Magee , Harvey Hall , Stevie Smith , Hugh Dickson , and Basil Jones were the other readers for the project. The poets from whose work they read included W. B. Yeats , D. H. Lawrence
Author summary	Elizabeth Jennings	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. qtd. in The Ship. St Anne’s College. 92: 54 Early in her career she...
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...
Publishing	Barbara Pym	In a letter to Philip LarkinBP wrote that she felt she had been treated very badly by Cape , but that she was also not altogether surprised. For one thing she knew that other...
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. TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive. 2705 (4 December 1953): 778 Other...
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...

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