Since its publication in 1988, Philip Larkin's Collected Poems has become essential reading on any poetry bookshelf. This new edition returns to Larkin's own deliberate ordering of his poems, presenting, in their original sequence, his four published books: The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows. It also includes an appendix of poems that Larkin published in other places, from his juvenilia to his final years - some of which might have appeared in a late book, if he had lived. Preserving everything that he published in his lifetime, this new Collected Poems returns the reader to the book Larkin might have intended.
For the first time, Faber publish a selection from the poetry of Philip Larkin. Drawing on Larkin's four collections and on his uncollected poems. Chosen by Martin Amis. 'Many poets make us smile; how many poets make us laugh - or, in that curious phrase, "laugh out loud" (as if there's another way of doing it)? Who else uses an essentially conversational idiom to achieve such a variety of emotional effects? Who else takes us, and takes us so often, from sunlit levity to mellifluous gloom?... Larkin, often, is more than memorable: he is instantly unforgettable.' - Martin Amis
Philip Larkin (1992-1985) Is Today Acclaimed As A British National Cultural Icon. Historically A Movementeer, Larkin Followed The Pleasure Principle To Democratize Poetry By Forging A Distinctive Philistine Aesthetic, By Employing A Defiantly Demotic Diction, And By Building His Poems Around A Structure Of Rational Discourse.Philip Larkin : Poetry That Builds Bridges Is A Well-Researched And Immensely Readable Book. It Is Perhaps The Only Work Available Today That Offers A Comprehensive Critical Account Of The Full Range Of Larkin S Poetry. A Significant Contribution To Larkin Studies, This Book Provides A Between-The-Lines Analysis Of Almost All The Poems Embodied In The Four Major Collections Of Larkin The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings And High Windows.By Exploiting The Resources Of Larkin S Letters, His Prose Writings And His Biography, The Author Traces, Much Against The Grain Of Contemporary Larkin Criticism, The Poet S Thematic, Attitudinal And Technical Development From One Book Of His Poetry To The Next, And Shows The Trend Of Larkin S Evolution.With A Holistic Approach To The Total Corpus Of Larkin S Poetry, The Author Perspectivises The Poet, And Argues The Larkin S Achievements Lie In His Success In Building Bridges Between Aestheticism And Philistinism, Between Empiricism And Transcendentalism, Between Classicism And Romanticism, Between Modernism And Postmodernism, Between The Native British Poetic Tradition And The Anglo-Franco-American Experimental Line, And, Above All, Between Poetry And The Reading Public.This Book Also Contends The Larkin S Vision Of Life Is Neither Pessimistic Nor Optimistic, But Tragic And Melioristic.
The First Person and Other Stories is the fourth collection of short stories by Ali Smith. The First Person and Other Stories effortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones. Always intellectually playful, but also very moving and funny, Smith explores the ways and whys of storytelling. In one, a middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. In another, an innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, a third presents its narrator, 'Ali', as she drinks tea, phones a friend and muses on the relationship between the short story and - a nymph. Innovative, sophisticated and intelligent, the stories in The First Person and Other Stories are packed full of ideas, jokes, nuance and compassion. Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other. 'Smith's is a profoundly optimistic vision. These stories are frightening yet funny, and the sheer exuberance and playfulness of her language endows dark matters with a lightness of touch' New Statesman 'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton 'Terrific . . . hurrah for Ali Smith . . . The best short-story writers make it look as easy as making a cup of tea. Ali Smith is one of these . . . A bold and brilliant collection of stories by a writer unafraid to give it to us as it is' Times 'A glorious collection that celebrates and subverts the short story form' Independent
Philip Larkin met Monica Jones at University College Leicester in autumn 1946, when they were both twenty-four; he was the newly-appointed assistant librarian and she was an English lecturer. In 1950 Larkin moved to Belfast, and thence to Hull, while Monica remained in Leicester, becoming by turns his correspondent, lover and closest confidante, in a relationship which lasted over forty years until the poet's death in 1985. This remarkable unpublished correspondence only came to light after Monica Jones's death in 2001, and consists of nearly two thousand letters, postcards and telegrams, which chronicle - day by day, sometimes hour by hour - every aspect of Larkin's life and the convolutions of their relationship.
_______________ 'Superb ... Booth's psychology is subtler than Motion's and more convincing' - Peter J. Conradi, Spectator 'Booth's diligence is unquestionable and even readers who think they know the poems will see nuances they had previously missed ... should render further attention by biographers superfluous for several years' - Guardian 'Those of us who never warmed to Larkin the man or poet, will have our aversions challenged by this sympathetic but different account of his life and work' - Independent _______________ A fascinating and controversial study of Philip Larkin's world and how it bled into his work, James Booth's biography is a unique insight into the man whose life and art have been misunderstood for too long Philip Larkin was that rare thing among poets: a household name in his own lifetime. Lines such as 'Never such innocence again' and 'Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three' made him one of the most popular poets of the last century. Larkin's reputation as a man, however, has been more controversial. A solitary librarian known for his pessimism, he disliked exposure and had no patience with the literary circus. And when, in 1992, the publication of his Selected Letters laid bare his compartmentalised personal life, accusations of duplicity, faithlessness, racism and misogyny were levelled against him. There is, of course, no requirement that poets should be likeable or virtuous, but James Booth asks whether art and life were really so deeply at odds with each other. Can the poet who composed the moving 'Love Songs in Age' have been such a cold-hearted man? Can he who uttered the playful, self-deprecating words 'Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth' really have been so boorish? A very different public image is offered by those who shared the poet's life: the women with whom he was romantically involved, his friends and his university colleagues. It is with their personal testimony, including access to previously unseen letters, that Booth reinstates a man misunderstood: not a gaunt, emotional failure, but a witty, provocative and entertaining presence, delightful company; an attentive son and a man devoted to the women he loved. Meticulously researched, unwaveringly frank and full of fresh material, Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love definitively reinterprets one of our greatest poets.
Overturning many of the established perspectives on Larkin's poetry and prose, Cooper's book presents new evidence from a range of previously unpublished sources, and is the first full-length critical work to analyse Larkin's early fiction, as well as advancing new readings of The Less Deceived', The Whitsun Weddings' and High Windows'. Critics have tended to label Larkin's poetry as sexist, racist and reactionary. However, this volume demonstrates that Larkin's artistic impulse throughout his career was to challenge orthodox models of social and sexual politics. Focusing on the Brunette Coleman novellas and the unfinished novels, a structural blueprint is identified as prefiguring the later poems' commentary on sexual and social conduct. Further unpublished material includes correspondence, workbook drafts, dream records, and a playscript, depicting, alternately, hostility to wartime heroics, revulsion from capitalism, unease with traditional gender roles and an interest in psychoanalysis. This study makes available to scholars paintings by Larkin's friend, James Sutton, which illuminate the writer's concern with social oppression, especially the predicament of women in the 1940s. This is a fresh and revealing study on Larkin's artistic subversion; stylistic and thematic, it reveals the underlying themes of Larkin's entire oeuvre.
