Larkin at Sixty (1982) is a collection of original essays and poems published to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of the English poet Philip Larkin. It was edited and introduced by Anthony Thwaite and published by Larkin's publishers, Faber and Faber. [1] A poetic dramatisation of the launch of the book was written by Russell Davies. [2]
Thwaite's introduction [3] reveals that there were originally to be twenty-three contributors, but four ("An American, a Russian, a Pakistani and a woman") dropped out for various reasons. As well as the introduction, the book contains the following:
Philip Arthur Larkin was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947). He came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, with his articles gathered in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973). His many honours include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984, following the death of Sir John Betjeman.
The Movement was a term coined in 1954 by J. D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, to describe a group of writers including Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, D. J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn and Robert Conquest. The Movement was quintessentially English in character; poets from other parts of the United Kingdom were not involved.
Sir Andrew Motion is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. In 2012, he became President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking over from Bill Bryson.
Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro.
The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse is a poetry anthology edited by Philip Larkin. It was published in 1973 by Oxford University Press with ISBN 0-19-812137-7. Larkin writes in the short preface that the selection is wide rather than deep; and also notes that for the post-1914 period it is more a collection of poems, than of poets. The remit was limited by him to poets with a period of residence in the British Isles. Larkin's generous selection of Thomas Hardy's poems has been noted for its influence on Hardy's later reputation. On the other hand, he was criticized, notably by Donald Davie, for his inclusion of "pop" poets such as Brian Patten. The volume contains works by 207 poets.
Brunette Coleman was a pseudonym used by the poet and writer Philip Larkin. In 1943, towards the end of his time as an undergraduate at St John's College, Oxford, he wrote several works of fiction, verse and critical commentary under that name, including homoerotic stories that parody the style of popular writers of contemporary girls' school fiction.
Anthony Simon Thwaite OBE was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters.
Alan Charles Brownjohn was an English poet and novelist. He also worked as a teacher, lecturer, critic and broadcaster.
Father and Son, originally subtitled "A Study of Two Temperaments", is a 1907 memoir by the poet and critic Edmund Gosse, initially published anonymously. Gosse had already published a biography of his father in 1890.
Peter Neville Frederick Porter OAM was a British-based Australian poet.
George Mann MacBeth was a Scottish poet and novelist.
Patrick Ewart Garland was a British director, writer and actor.
Jill is a novel by English writer Philip Larkin, first published in 1946 by The Fortune Press, and reprinted by Faber and Faber (London) in 1964. It was written between 1943 and 1944, when Larkin was twenty-one years old and an undergraduate at St John's College, Oxford.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Bernard O'Donoghue FRSL is a contemporary Irish poet and academic.
"An Arundel Tomb" is a poem by Philip Larkin, written and published in 1956, and subsequently included in his 1964 collection The Whitsun Weddings. It describes the poet's response to seeing a pair of recumbent medieval tomb effigies with their hands joined in Chichester Cathedral. It is described by James Booth as "one of [Larkin's] greatest poems". It comprises 7 verses of 6 lines each, each with rhyme scheme ABBCAC.
Collected Poems is the title of a posthumous collection of Philip Larkin's poetry edited by Anthony Thwaite and published by Faber and Faber. He released two notably different editions in 1988 and 2003, the first of which also includes previously unpublished work. Both editions include the contents of Larkin's collections The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, plus other material.
The Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985 is a volume of Philip Larkin's personal correspondence, compiled by Anthony Thwaite, one of Larkin's literary executors, and published in 1992 by Faber and Faber, seven years after Larkin's death. It was followed a year later by Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, Larkin's official biography, written by Andrew Motion, Larkin's other literary executor.
"Church Going" is a poem by the English poet Philip Larkin (1922–1985) that is generally regarded as one of his masterpieces. Larkin's first draft of the poem was dated 24 April 1954. He worked through 21 pages of drafts, abandoned it, then took it back up, emerging with his final version in July 1954. "Church Going" was published in The Less Deceived. Larkin's fondness for English ecclesiastical architecture, and the seriousness of mood he felt in such places, are apparent in the poem, standing in contrast to his cynicism about Christianity. "Church Going" is notable for its reference to the "cycle-clips" often associated in the popular imagination with Larkin during his lifetime.
Jean Hartley was an English autobiographer and publisher. She and her husband George Hartley co-founded the publication company Marvell Press in 1954, which published volumes of poetry. They also founded the record company Listen Records. After Hartley separated from her husband and left Marvell Press, she earned degrees in English Literature and Victorian Studies from the University of Hull in the early 1970s. She taught English at her former secondary school and lectured at the Hull College of Further Education. In 1995, Hartley was made vice-chairman of the Philip Larkin Society to promote the life and works of her friend and poet Philip Larkin. She was on the steering committee of the Larkin 25 committee in 2010. The Hull History Centre holds a collection of items on Hartley's life and career.