Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin was an English novelist, poet, and librarian. In , he published his first book of poetry, The North Ship. In and , he published two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, respectively. In , he started gaining fame with the publication of The Less Deceived, his second collection of poems. Whitsun, published in , followed the collection, and High Windows, published in He was a post-war and post-modernist writer. He received many honors, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry. After the death of Sir John Betjeman in , Larkin was offered a position of Poet Laureate, but he declined.
A Short Biography of Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin was born on 9th August in Coventry to Sydney Larkin and Eva Larkin. He was the only son in his family. His father was City Treasurer during the years to From to , Philip Larkin attended the City’s King Henry VIII School. He would regularly contribute to the school magazine, The Coventarian, with his writings. He also edited the magazine in the last year of his school.
He went to St. John College, Oxford, after graduating from school. Though the war was going on, he continued to complete his degree without
Ugly beauty title of an article reviewing Larkin's Collected Poems
A poem is a difficult thing in itself, open to many interpretations; a collection of poems, by extension, must be a still more complex thing. What then of the life of the poet who wrote them? I think sometimes we forget how wholly inadequate words really are. I find myself slinking back to the same old subjects again and again because I'm never wholly satisfied with my previous efforts. Poems are private things that we insist on putting on public display, at least that is what they are for me, and I believe that is what they were for Philip Larkin too; he wrote for himself first and foremost. In a letter to the publisher D. J. Enright, Larkin said: "I think the impulse to preserve lies at the bottom of all art"[1]. I believe that's a fair statement. But just because a poem is a private thing we shouldn't assume it is necessarily revealing. That was made clear when Larkin's biography and letters were published after his death. Who was this man?
Any portrait of a man can only possibly be a partial affair; even a sculpture only reveals so much. The Larkin we see through his poetry is an honest
The Greatness of Philip Larkin
During his lifetime, the poet Philip Larkin tried to manage his affairs, both personal and literary, mostly by saying no. A bachelor librarian who died at 63, Larkin deliberately cultivated an existence with minimal obligations—no wife, no kids, no property, not even a pet. “My life,” he remarked, “is as simple as I can make it.” Notably parsimonious, he rode a bike until he turned 41 and reluctantly bought his first car. (“Oh, dear,” he wrote his long-suffering girlfriend Monica Jones. “Isn’t it all untypical?”) He would never have owned a house had he not been evicted from a “temporary” new-faculty flat in which he had squatted for 18 years. The move proved so unsettling that he stopped writing.
Larkin’s literary career was equally narrow and controlled. In his prime he published an average of only four poems a year. Later he defended his creative collapse: “Silence is preferable to publishing rubbish and far better for one’s reputation.” He never gave readings or lectures. (He had an embarrassing stammer.) He avoided London literary life. His
PHILIP LARKIN
BIOGRAPHY
Philip Arthur Larkin was born on August 9, , in Coventry. He was the second child, and only son, of Sydney and Eva Larkin. Sydney Larkin was City Treasurer between the years Larkin’s sister, some ten years his senior, was called Catherine, but was known as Kitty.
He attended the City’s King Henry VIII School between and , and made regular contributions to the school magazine, The Coventrian, which, between and , he also helped to edit .
After leaving King Henry VIII, he went to St. John’s College, Oxford, and despite the war (Larkin had failed his army medical because of his poor eyesight), was able to complete his degree without interruption, graduating in with First Class Honours in English. His closest friends at Oxford were Kingsley Amis and Bruce Montgomery.
The first of his poems to be published in a national weekly was ‘Ultimatum’, which appeared in the Listener, November 28, Then in June , three of his poems were published in Oxford Poetry () . These were ‘A Stone Church Damaged By A Bomb’, ‘Mythological Introduction’, and ‘I dreamed of an out-thrust arm of land’.
After graduating, Larkin lived with his parents for a while, before being
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