Book
The complete poems / Philip Larkin ; edited and with an introduction and commentary by Archie Burnett.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780374126964
- ISBN: 0374126968
- Physical Description: xxx, 729 p. ; 24 cm.
- Edition: 1st American ed.
- Publisher: New York, N.Y. : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Content descriptions
| General Note: | Includes index. |
| Formatted Contents Note: | Acknowledgements [sic] -- Abbreviations Used -- Introduction -- The Poems -- The North Ship -- The Less Deceived -- The Whitsun Weddings -- High Windows -- Other Poems Published in the Poet's Lifetime -- Poems Not Published in the Poet's Lifetime -- Undated or Approximately Dated Poems -- Commentary -- The North Ship -- The Less Deceived -- The Whitsun Weddings -- High Windows -- Other Poems Published in the Poet's Lifetime -- Poems Not Published in the Poet's Lifetime -- Undated or Approximately Dated Poems -- Appendices -- I. Larkin's Early Collections of His Poems -- II. Dates of Composition -- Index of Titles and First Lines. |
| Summary, etc.: | This entirely new edition brings together all of Philip Larkin's poems. In addition to those that appear in Collected Poems (1988) and Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005), some unpublished pieces from Larkin's typescripts and workbooks are included, as well as verse--by turns scurrilous, satirical, affectionate, and sentimental--that had been tucked away in his letters. For the first time, Larkin's 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. Prominence is given to the poet's comments on his own poems, which often outline the circumstances that gave rise to a poem or state what he was trying to achieve. Larkin often 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. |
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| Subject: | English poetry > 20th century. |
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Author Notes
The Complete Poems
Philip Larkin was a British poet, novelist, critic, and essayist. Born in 1922 in Coventry, England, he graduated from St. John's College, Oxford, in 1940 and then pursued a career as a librarian, becoming the librarian at the University of Hull in 1955. Although he led a retiring life and published infrequently, producing only one volume of poetry approximately every 10 years, Larkin was still considered one of the preeminent contemporary British poets. He is often associated with the "Movement," a 1950s literary group that, through the use of colloquial language and common, everyday subjects, endeavored to create poetry that would appeal to the common reader. However, this association came about mainly because Larkin's poem "Church Going," for which he first gained critical attention, was published in New Lines, an anthology of the "Movement" poets. In reality, his work, particularly his later poems, is not typical of the group. Larkin's published a total of only four volumes of poetry: The North Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964), and High Windows (1974). He also wrote two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and published two volumes of prose, Required Writing and All That Jazz, a collection of his reviews of jazz records. Philip Larkin died in 1985. (Bowker Author Biography)
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