The Philip Larkin I Knew

The Philip Larkin I Knew PDF Author: Maeve Brennan
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719062766
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Maeve Brennan had a close friendship with Philip Larkin, as well as working with him for a number of years. In this book, she provides new insight into the poet's complex personality, overturning the perceived image of him as a misanthrope.

The Philip Larkin I Knew

The Philip Larkin I Knew PDF Author: Maeve Brennan
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719062766
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Maeve Brennan had a close friendship with Philip Larkin, as well as working with him for a number of years. In this book, she provides new insight into the poet's complex personality, overturning the perceived image of him as a misanthrope.

Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica PDF Author: Philip Larkin
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571264611
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
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 This remarkable unpublished correspondence only came to light after Monica Jones's death in 2001, and consists of nearly two thousand letters, postcards and telegrams, which chronicle -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.

Philip Larkin Poems

Philip Larkin Poems PDF Author: Philip Larkin
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571271766
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
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

Philip Larkin PDF Author: J. Booth
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230595820
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
James Booth reads Philip Larkin's mature poetry in terms of his ambiguous self-image as lonely, anti-social outsider, plighted to his art, and as nine-to-five librarian, sharing the common plight of humanity. Booth's focus is on Larkin's artistry with words, the 'verbal devices' through which this purest of lyric poets celebrates 'the experience. The beauty.' Featuring discussion for the first time of two recently discovered poems by Larkin, this original and exciting new study will be of interest to all students, scholars and enthusiasts of Larkin.

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin PDF Author: James Booth
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408851679
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 815

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Book Description
_______________ '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.

Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life

Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life PDF Author: Andrew Motion
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571266037
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Book Description
Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life won the Whitbread Award for Biography in 1993 and was championed as 'an exemplary biography of its kind' (The Times). With a new introduction written by the author, this edition offers an engrossing portrait of one of the twentieth century's most popular, and most private, poets. 'There will be other lives of Larkin, but Motion's, like Forster's of Dickens, will always have a special place.' John Carey, Sunday Times'Larkin lived a quietly noble and exemplary version of the writer's life; Motion - affectionate but undeceived about the man's frailties, a diligent researcher and a deft reader of poetry - has written an equally exemplary 'Life' of him.' Peter Conrad, Observer'Honest but not prurient, critical but also compassionate, Motion's book could not be bettered.' Alan Bennett, London Review of Books

So You Think You Know Philip Larkin?

So You Think You Know Philip Larkin? PDF Author: M. R. Sethi
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 1665710411
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Nothing seemed to escape the eyes of Philip Larkin, a contemporary English poet who achieved acclaim on the strength of a small body of work. While lyrically exploring the human experience, Larkin’s candid perceptions were enlivened by his acute power of observation—a unique literary talent that prompted his recognition as England’s other Poet Laureate. In a fascinating quiz book that will appeal to both Larkin scholars and lovers of poetry and literature, retired English professor M. R. Sethi shares more than six hundred questions (with answers) that offer an opportunity to test knowledge regarding the life and works of the famous poet. Scholars and others will be tested on Larkin’s physical shortcomings, his first jobs, what he wore while mowing the lawn, why he once threatened to jump out a window, who was not one of his friends at Oxford, and much more that includes detailed questions regarding many of his poems. So You Think You Know Philip Larkin? is a volume of questions and answers shared to test the knowledge of both scholars and poetry and literature aficionados about a famous, contemporary poet.

Philip Larkin: Letters Home

Philip Larkin: Letters Home PDF Author: Philip Larkin
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571335616
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 671

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Book Description
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- But it was the years during which he and his sister looked after their mother in particular 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 Larkin's biographer, James Booth, is a key piece of scholarship that completes the portrait of this most cherished of English poets.

Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me

Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me PDF Author: John Sutherland
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1474620213
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
'A brilliant biography - John Sutherland has brought Monica Jones to life as she deserves.' Claire Tomalin 'Eye-opening... in this account [Monica Jones] comes alive.' The Sunday Times Monica Jones was Philip Larkin's partner for more than four decades, and was arguably the most important woman in his life. She was cruelly immortalised as Margaret Peel in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and widely vilified for destroying Larkin's diaries and works in progress after his death. She was opinionated and outspoken, widely disliked by his friends and Philip himself was routinely unfaithful to her. But Monica Jones was also a brilliant academic and an inspiring teacher in her own right. She wrote more than 2,000 letters to Larkin, and he in turn poured out his heart to her. In this revealing biography John Sutherland explores the question: who was the real Monica? The calm and collected friend and teacher? The witty conversationalist and inspirational lecturer? Or the private Monica, writing desperate, sometimes furious, occasionally libellous, drunken letters to the only man, to the absent man, whom she could love? Was Monica's life - one of total sacrifice to a great poet - worthwhile? Through his careful reading of Monica's never-before-seen letters, and his own recollections, John Sutherland shows us a new side to Larkin's story, and allows Monica to finally step out from behind the poet's shadow.

Selected Letters of Philip Larkin

Selected Letters of Philip Larkin PDF Author: Philip Larkin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571170487
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 791

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Book Description
Seven hundred of the great poet's letters are collected here offering a moving, instructive portrait of Larken, from his early correspondence with school friends to his last year of life, 1985, when he died at the age of sixty-three.