- Paperback: 791 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (25 Oct 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 057117048X
- ISBN-13: 978-0571170487
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 140,712 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Philip Larkin: Selected Letters for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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.
About the Author
Philip Larkin was born in Coventry in 1922 and was educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry, and St John's College, Oxford. As well as his volumes of poems, which include The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, he wrote two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and two books of collected journalism: All What Jazz: A Record Library, and Required Writing: Miscellaneous Prose. He worked as a librarian at the University of Hull from 1955 until his death in 1985. He was the best-loved poet of his generation, and the recipient of innumerable honours, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the WHSmith Award.
As one of Philip Larkin's chosen literary executors, Anthony Thwaite edited the Collected Poems, Selected Letters and Further Requirements. His own Collected Poems, drawing on fifty years work, was published in 2007.
As one of Philip Larkin's chosen literary executors, Anthony Thwaite edited the Collected Poems, Selected Letters and Further Requirements. His own Collected Poems, drawing on fifty years work, was published in 2007.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
I've just been out shopping & bought 1 pkt of notepaper, 25 envelopes, 1 oz tobacco, 1 oz assorted cigarettes (Russian, Egyptian & fuck-all), 1 notebook, and 1 child's drawing book. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
I've just been out shopping & bought 1 pkt of notepaper, 25 envelopes, 1 oz tobacco, 1 oz assorted cigarettes (Russian, Egyptian & fuck-all), 1 notebook, and 1 child's drawing book. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a remarkable book. Larkin was an assiduous letter writer throughout his life, and this book presents over 40 years of them, to a very broad range of recipients, many well-known (Kingsley Amis, Douglas Dunn, John Wain, John Betjeman). Letter-writing featured strongly in both Larkin's completed novels, and can be seen to be a very important aspect of his life. But as both "Jill" and "A Girl In Winter" suggest, letter-writing not only acts to entertain and send news and gossip to the recipient, but also offer a partial self-definition. You write TO a particular person, and what you write is in part defined by that person. This is particularly the case here, where Larkin's voice and register change dramatically not only over time (as you'd expect) but very much by the recipient.
So, to start with, Larkin's youthful letters are a delight, as he is keen to impress others with his intelligence and his profound discoveries of the world around him. With JB Sutton, he becomes intimate as with no other, and reveals his profoundest worries, amidst much DH Lawrence worship, but gets stuck in this vein. With Kingsley Amis he is matey, blokish and hard-swearing. With Robert Conquest later on, even more so (with additional pornographic interest). The main biographical interest in this book will be, I suppose, his letters to the women in his life. To Monica, his main lover and companion (and his intellectual equal), he is profound, honest and self-castigating, whereas with Maeve (his "love") he is far more generous, tender and much less self-concerned. Things start to alter in the 1960s, though, as he starts to sour, and his letters to Amis and a former school friend Colin Gunner become almost staggering outpourings of vitriolic bile. They are always funny, suggesting that he isn't entirely serious, but because the attitudes are elsewhere expressed far less intently, you realise that he did hold those opinions. (There is a recording somewhere, of Larkin drunkenly singing a racist ditty that is quite stomach-turning). The closing few years are grim to read.
Nonetheless, it must be said that this is an absolutely fascinating volume to read, massively enlightening about Larkin's poetry, featuring pleasing amounts of literary gossip, portraits of many literary figures and many opinions and attitudes which broaden our knowledge of Larkin the man. To be read by any fan of Larkin's poetry.
So, to start with, Larkin's youthful letters are a delight, as he is keen to impress others with his intelligence and his profound discoveries of the world around him. With JB Sutton, he becomes intimate as with no other, and reveals his profoundest worries, amidst much DH Lawrence worship, but gets stuck in this vein. With Kingsley Amis he is matey, blokish and hard-swearing. With Robert Conquest later on, even more so (with additional pornographic interest). The main biographical interest in this book will be, I suppose, his letters to the women in his life. To Monica, his main lover and companion (and his intellectual equal), he is profound, honest and self-castigating, whereas with Maeve (his "love") he is far more generous, tender and much less self-concerned. Things start to alter in the 1960s, though, as he starts to sour, and his letters to Amis and a former school friend Colin Gunner become almost staggering outpourings of vitriolic bile. They are always funny, suggesting that he isn't entirely serious, but because the attitudes are elsewhere expressed far less intently, you realise that he did hold those opinions. (There is a recording somewhere, of Larkin drunkenly singing a racist ditty that is quite stomach-turning). The closing few years are grim to read.
Nonetheless, it must be said that this is an absolutely fascinating volume to read, massively enlightening about Larkin's poetry, featuring pleasing amounts of literary gossip, portraits of many literary figures and many opinions and attitudes which broaden our knowledge of Larkin the man. To be read by any fan of Larkin's poetry.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Fascinating and entertaining collection of letters. Some, especially the ones to Kingsley Amis, are very funny. The rest contain many interesting insights and observations, and are very readable. Thoroughly recommended, not just for Larkin fans.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
