Philip Larkin – författare

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: it is, for the first time, Larkin's 'own' collected poems.

Philip Larkin's Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse provoked controversy and dispute on first publication in 1973. Warmly welcomed by fellow poets John Betjeman and W.H. Auden, it was also considered a quirky and idiosyncratic collection by some critics. Today it is recognized as a fine and wide-ranging selection of modern verse, valuable not least because it reflects the tastes of one of the best, and best-loved, English poets of the twentieth century. As the successor to W.B. Yeats's Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935, this anthology made a radical re-assessment of the century's achievement in poetry; it represented verse that was `lighter in tone, more understated, more casual, more conversational, more colloquial, in a way more democratic and more domestic than it was for Yeats'. It also introduced many little-known poets whose names have not entered the canon, and whose contributions add colour and depth to the anthology. As Philip Larkin writes in his Preface, in choosing poems rather than individuals he has brought together `poems that will give pleasure to their readers both separately and as a collection'. For this latest reissue, the poet's biographer Andrew Motion has written a new Foreword in which he considers the nature of Larkin as editor.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) remains England's best-loved poet - a writer matchlessly capable of evoking his native land and of touching all readers from the most sophisticated intellectual to the proverbial common reader. The late John Betjeman observed that 'this tenderly observant poet writes clearly, rhythmically, and thoughtfully about what all of us can understand'. Behind this modest description lies a poet who made greatness look, in Milton's prescription, 'simple, sensuous and passionate'.This collection, first published in 1967, contains many of his best-loved poems, including The Whitsun Weddings, An Arundel Tomb, Days, Mr Bleaney and MCMXIV.

The appearance of Philip Larkin's second prose collection - reviews and critical assessments of writers and writing; pieces on jazz, mostly uncollected; some long, revealing and often highly entertaining interviews given on various occasions - was a considerable literary event. Stamped by wit, originality and intelligence, it was vintage Larkin throughout:'Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.''I see life more as an affair of solitude diversified by company than as an affair of company diversified by solitude.'Q. 'How did you arrive upon the image of a toad for work or labour?'A. 'Sheer genius.'

The enormous popular appeal of Philip Larkin's poetry has long been established; but oddly little is known to his admiring public about the personality behind the work.The Selected Letters will change this, throwing light on a more complex, and in many ways more remarkable, figure than most readers will be expecting. Whether addressing his literary friends - who included Barbara Pym, Kingsley Amis and John Betjeman - or those less prominently placed, Larkin shows himself to have been one of the frankest and most generously entertaining letter-writers of the century.Confessions, jokes, advice, scurrilities, pronouncements on literature and jazz, impromptu verses published here for the first time, gossip and wisdom abound in these pages. They give an astonishing view of a great poet's progress from brash youth to rueful age, and, in complementing the poems, provide a biographical document that no serious reader can afford to ignore.

Philip Larkin's Required Writing, a selection from his miscellaneous prose from 1953-82, was highly praised and enjoyed when it appeared in 1983. Further Requirements gathers together many other interviews, broadcasts, statements and reviews. Some of them date from the period after he had chosen the contents of Required Writing; others come from obscure publications, including some early pieces. This second edition of Further Requirements includes two more essays by Larkin: 'Operation Manuscript' and his Introduction to Earth Memories by Llewelyn Powys.

Lose yourself in this tale of young love by the 'best-loved English poet of the past 100 years.' (Sunday Times)Katherine Lind is a refugee who has become a librarian in a wartime Northern town. One winter's day, she receives a telegram: and her thoughts drift back to falling in love with her pen-pal, Robin Fennel, on a glorious summer exchange. But on his return from the army, their reunion is not what they imagined ...'Beautiful.' Nina Stibbe'Remarkable . Diffused poetry.' Simon Garfield'Highly sensitive . Reminiscent of Virginia Woolf.' Joyce Carol Oates'Funny and profoundly sad.' Andrew Motion'Strange and beautiful ... Short, intense and obsessed with the tiny ballets of social interaction, they could only have been written by someone very young (the writer they most remind me of is Sally Rooney) ... Weird but brilliant ... Zingily contemporary.' Sunday Times

Michaelmas term, 1940. 18-year-old John Kemp has come down from Lancashire to Oxford University to begin his scholarship studying English. But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable 'friend', and then falls in love for real, undergraduate life becomes its own strange world .'Absolutely contemporary - perhaps even prophetic.' Joyce Carol Oates'Remarkable . A book about innocence.' Simon Garfield'A cryptic literary manifesto [about] discovering a literary personality, and the consolation art can provide.' Andrew Motion

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.

This entirely new edition brings together all of Philip Larkin's poems. In addition to those in Collected Poems (1988), and in the Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005), some unpublished pieces from Larkin's typescripts and workbooks are included, as well as verse (by turns scurrilous, satirical, affectionate, and sentimental) tucked away in his letters. The manuscript and printed sources have been scrutinized afresh; more detailed accounts than hitherto available of the sources of the text and of dates of composition are provided; and previous accounts of composition dates have been corrected. Variant wordings from Larkin's typescripts and the early printings are recorded.For the first time, the poems are given a comprehensive commentary. This draws critically upon, and substantially extends, the accumulated scholarship on Larkin, and covers closely relevant historical contexts, persons and places, allusions and echoes, and linguistic usage. Due prominence is given to the poet's comments on his poems, which often outline the circumstances that gave rise to a poem, or state what he was trying to achieve. Larkin played down his literariness, but his poetry enrichingly alludes to and echoes the writings of many others; Archie Burnett's commentary establishes him as a more complex and more literary poet than many readers have suspected.

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's second collection, The Less Deceived was published by The Marvell Press in 1955, and now appears for the first time in Faber covers.The eye can hardly pick them out From the cold shade they shelter in, Till wind distresses tail and mane; Then one crops grass, and moves about - The other seeming to look on - And stands anonymous again.from 'At Grass'

The North Ship, Philip Larkin's earliest volume of verse, was first published in August 1945 and reissued in 1966 by Faber. The introduction, by Larkin himself, explains the circumstances of its publication and the influences which shaped its content.This is the first thingI have understood:Time is the echo of an axeWithin a wood.

Larkin's final collection of poems shows, as does all his best work, his ability to adapt contemporary speech rhythms and everyday vocabulary to subtle metrical patterns and poetic forms. Many of the poems in the collection, which includes some of his best-known pieces ('The Old Fools', 'This Be the Verse', 'The Explosion', and the title poem) show the preoccupation with death and transience that is so typical of the poet.Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. from 'High Windows'

Letters Home gives access to the last major archive of Larkin's writing to remain unpublished: the letters to members of his family. These correspondences help tell the story of how Larkin came to be the writer and the man he was: to his father Sydney, a 'conservative anarchist' and admirer of Hitler, who died relatively early in Larkin's life; to his timid, depressive mother Eva, who by contrast lived long, and whose final years were shadowed by dementia; and to his sister Kitty, the sparse surviving fragment of whose correspondence with her brother gives an enigmatic glimpse of a complex and intimate relationship. In particular, it was the years during which he and his sister looked after their mother that shaped the writer we know so well: a number of poems written over this time are for her, and the mood of pain, shadow and despondency that characterises his later verse draws its strength from his experience of the long, lonely years of her senility. One surprising element in the volume, however, is the joie de vivre shown in the large number of witty and engaging drawings of himself and Eva, as 'Young Creature' and 'Old Creature', with which he enlivens his letters throughout the three decades of her widowhood.This important edition, meticulously edited by James Booth is a key piece of scholarship that completes the portrait of this most cherished of English poets.

Larkin's final collection of poems shows, as does all his best work, his ability to adapt contemporary speech rhythms and everyday vocabulary to subtle metrical patterns and poetic forms. Many of the poems in the collection, which includes some of his best-known pieces ('The Old Fools', 'This Be the Verse', 'The Explosion', and the title poem) show the preoccupation with death and transience that is so typical of the poet.This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series of ten titles celebrating Faber's publishing over the decades.

The essential pocket edition of this most beloved and quoted of poets.Our almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.In lines perfectly constructed and as beautiful as they are plain-spoken, Philip Larkin found a way of delineating our most difficult emotions - giving them back to us in images and formulations that help us both comprehend and contain ourselves. His is a fine-tuning that turns 'true and kind' more truthfully into 'not untrue and not unkind.' These are poems to live with and through, from the trenchant assertion of 'They fuck you up. . .', to the transcendent image-making of 'High Windows':Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

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Philip Larkin (1922-85) was not only one of the foremost English poets of the twentieth century, but also a notable novelist and a distinguished writer on jazz. He was jazz critic for The Daily Telegraph between 1961 and 1971. Jazz Writings brings together Larkin's reviews, articles and essays written for The Guardian, The Observer, The New Statesman, and numerous other publications.