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Delving into the Philip Larkin Library: A Comprehensive Guide
Introduction:
Are you a devotee of Philip Larkin's poignant poetry and prose? Do you yearn to delve deeper into the life and works of this iconic 20th-century British writer? Then you've come to the right place! This comprehensive guide explores the rich resources available at the Philip Larkin Library, a treasure trove for Larkin enthusiasts and literary scholars alike. We'll uncover the library's holdings, its significance in preserving Larkin's legacy, and how you can access its invaluable collection, whether you're a local resident or an international researcher. We'll also explore the digital resources available and discuss future developments for this vital literary archive.
Understanding the Significance of the Philip Larkin Library:
The Philip Larkin Library, located at Hull University in Hull, England, is not just a repository of books; it's a living testament to the life and work of one of Britain's most celebrated poets. Beyond housing Larkin's personal library, which offers a fascinating glimpse into his reading habits and literary influences, the library also holds a vast collection of manuscripts, letters, photographs, and other archival materials relating to his life and career. These materials offer researchers unparalleled access to the creative process of a literary giant, allowing for a nuanced understanding of his poetic development and the socio-cultural context that shaped his work. The library acts as a critical center for Larkin scholarship, attracting researchers from across the globe and fostering a vibrant community dedicated to the study and appreciation of his work. Its existence ensures the preservation of Larkin's legacy for generations to come, preventing the scattering of his invaluable personal effects and papers.
Accessing the Philip Larkin Library's Resources:
The Philip Larkin Library offers a range of access options to researchers and the public. While some materials may require prior arrangement and specific permissions, a significant portion of the collection is accessible to scholars and enthusiasts with the appropriate credentials. The library website provides detailed information on access policies, including application processes and guidelines for visiting researchers. It's crucial to check the library's official website for the most up-to-date information on opening hours, appointment scheduling, and any specific restrictions that may apply. For those unable to visit in person, the library actively works to digitize its collection, making select materials available online through its digital archives. This online access extends the reach of the library's resources to a global audience, furthering the dissemination of Larkin's work and scholarship surrounding him.
Exploring the Collection: Manuscripts, Letters, and More:
The heart of the Philip Larkin Library lies in its rich collection of primary source materials. These include:
Manuscripts: The library houses numerous drafts and revisions of Larkin's poems and prose, showcasing his meticulous writing process and offering insights into his creative choices. Examining these manuscripts provides a unique opportunity to witness the evolution of his iconic works.
Letters: Larkin's extensive correspondence provides invaluable insights into his personal life, literary friendships, and critical opinions. These letters offer a window into the mind of a complex and often enigmatic individual.
Photographs: A collection of photographs depicts Larkin at different stages of his life, providing visual context to his biography and illustrating his relationship with family, friends, and colleagues.
Personal Library: The collection includes Larkin's personal library, reflecting his diverse reading tastes and literary influences. This collection offers valuable clues to the intellectual landscape that shaped his own writing.
Audio Recordings: Where available, these recordings offer a rare opportunity to hear Larkin's voice reading his own poetry, offering a deeper connection to his work.
The Future of the Philip Larkin Library:
The Philip Larkin Library continues to evolve, embracing new technologies and expanding its outreach. Ongoing digitization efforts are making its collection increasingly accessible to researchers worldwide. The library also actively engages in educational initiatives, hosting workshops, lectures, and exhibitions to promote Larkin's work and engage a broader audience. Future plans may include the development of new online resources, interactive exhibits, and collaborative research projects, ensuring that the library remains a dynamic and relevant center for Larkin scholarship for years to come.
Book Proposal: "Unlocking Larkin: A Guide to the Philip Larkin Library and its Treasures"
Introduction: Overview of Philip Larkin's life and work, establishing the significance of the library.
Chapter 1: The Library's Genesis: The history of the library’s establishment and its evolution.
Chapter 2: Accessing the Collection: Practical information on visiting, researching, and accessing digital resources.
Chapter 3: Key Holdings: Detailed analysis of significant items in the collection (manuscripts, letters, etc.).
Chapter 4: Larkin's Life and Work Reflected in the Archive: Connecting the archive materials to Larkin's biography and literary development.
Chapter 5: The Library's Impact on Larkin Scholarship: The library's role in academic research and its influence on critical interpretations.
Chapter 6: Preservation and Digitization Efforts: Discussion of the library's conservation strategies and digital initiatives.
Conclusion: Reflecting on the ongoing legacy of the library and its importance for future generations.
(Detailed explanation of each chapter would follow here, expanding on the points outlined above. Each chapter would be approximately 150-200 words long, providing in-depth analysis and supporting evidence.)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
1. Where is the Philip Larkin Library located? It's located at Hull University in Hull, England.
2. Is the library open to the public? While some access requires prior arrangement, parts of the collection are available to researchers and the public with appropriate permissions. Check their website for details.
3. What kind of materials are held in the library? Manuscripts, letters, photographs, personal library, audio recordings, and other archival materials related to Philip Larkin’s life and work.
4. Can I access materials online? Yes, the library is actively digitizing its collection, and some materials are already available online.
5. Do I need an appointment to visit? For research purposes, it’s highly recommended to book an appointment in advance.
6. What are the fees for accessing the library's resources? Fees, if any, will vary depending on the type of access and research requested. Check their website or contact the library directly.
7. Are there any guided tours available? Check the library's official website for information on tours and events.
8. How can I contribute to the Philip Larkin Library? Donations of materials or financial support can help the library preserve and expand its collection. Check their website for donation information.
9. What kind of research opportunities are available at the library? The library supports research in various areas, including literary studies, biography, and cultural history.
Related Articles:
1. Philip Larkin's Hull: Exploring the Poet's City: An exploration of the places in Hull that inspired Larkin's work.
2. The Poetry of Philip Larkin: A Critical Analysis: A deep dive into the themes and techniques of Larkin's poetry.
3. Philip Larkin's Personal Life and Relationships: An examination of Larkin's personal life and its impact on his writing.
4. The Influence of T.S. Eliot on Philip Larkin: A study of the literary influences on Larkin's poetic style.
5. Philip Larkin and the British Post-War Experience: How Larkin's work reflects the social and cultural landscape of post-war Britain.
6. A Comparative Study of Larkin and Other Modernist Poets: A comparative analysis of Larkin's poetry within the context of other modernist writers.
7. The Reception of Philip Larkin's Work: An overview of critical responses to Larkin's poetry over time.
8. The Preservation of Literary Archives: The Case of the Philip Larkin Library: A discussion of the challenges and importance of preserving literary archives.
9. Digitizing Literary Collections: Opportunities and Challenges: Exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with digitizing literary collections.
This comprehensive guide provides a solid foundation for understanding the significance and resources of the Philip Larkin Library. Remember to always check the official library website for the most up-to-date information and access guidelines.
| philip larkin library: The Philip Larkin I Knew Maeve Brennan, 2002 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 library: The First Person and Other Stories Ali Smith, 2012-10-04 A form-bending and endlessly inventive collection of short stories - from the MAN BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED and WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet 'A glorious collection that celebrates and subverts the short story form' Independent 'Hurrah for Ali Smith. The best short-story writers make it look as easy as making a cup of tea. Ali Smith is one of these... A bold and brilliant collection of stories by a writer unafraid to give it to us as it is' The Times A middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. An innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, we see a narrator, 'Ali', as she drinks tea, phones a friend and muses on the relationship between the short story and a nymph. Innovative, sophisticated and intelligent, The First Person and Other Stories effortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones in equal measure. One-of-a-kind Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin James Booth, 2014-08-28 _______________ '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 library: Philip Larkin Nicholas Marsh, 2017-09-16 Controversy rages around Larkin's character and life. This book takes a fresh look at his poems through close analysis, discussion of Larkin's major concerns and demonstrating how to approach these enigmatic works. It provides background information including an account of his life, discussion of cultural context and major critical views. |
| philip larkin library: The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin Philip Larkin, 2014-09-04 A stunning new edition that brings together all of Larkin's poems in addition to some unpublished pieces. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin Poems Philip Larkin, 2012-04-05 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 library: Philip Larkin J. Booth, 2005-08-10 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 library: The North Ship Philip Larkin, 2013-04-04 The North Ship, Philip Larkin's earliest volume of verse, was first published in August 1945. The introduction, by Larkin himself, explains the circumstances of its publication and the influences which shaped its contents. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin: The Man and his Work Dale Salwak, 1989-06-18 A collection of essays celebrating the talents of Philip Larkin, poet, critic and fiction writer who died in 1985. They range from Kingsley Amis' and Anthony Curtis' fine memoirs of Larkin's life at Oxford to William H.Pritchard's examination of some of the qualities in his poetry. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life Andrew Motion, 2019-05-02 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 |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica Philip Larkin, 2012-04-26 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 library: Philip Larkin Andrew Motion, 2018 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 |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin Janice Rossen, 1989 The author explores Larkin's poetry, novels, essays and jazz criticism. She shows his transition from novelist to poet, tracing the symbolist aspect of his work in the depiction of nature and addressing the influence of Hardy and Yeats on his poetic style. She looks at Larkin's celebration of England; his exasperation over 'difficulties with girls' and to his poetic use of coarse language in complaining about life's innumerable irritations. She also discusses the fury he expresses as he contemplates death. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin Stephen Cooper, 2004-10-10 Overturning many of the established perspectives on Larkin's poetry and prose, Cooper's book presents new evidence from a range of previously unpublished sources, and is the first full-length critical work to analyse Larkin's early fiction, as well as advancing new readings of The Less Deceived', The Whitsun Weddings' and High Windows'. Critics have tended to label Larkin's poetry as sexist, racist and reactionary. However, this volume demonstrates that Larkin's artistic impulse throughout his career was to challenge orthodox models of social and sexual politics. Focusing on the Brunette Coleman novellas and the unfinished novels, a structural blueprint is identified as prefiguring the later poems' commentary on sexual and social conduct. Further unpublished material includes correspondence, workbook drafts, dream records, and a playscript, depicting, alternately, hostility to wartime heroics, revulsion from capitalism, unease with traditional gender roles and an interest in psychoanalysis. This study makes available to scholars paintings by Larkin's friend, James Sutton, which illuminate the writer's concern with social oppression, especially the predicament of women in the 1940s. This is a fresh and revealing study on Larkin's artistic subversion; stylistic and thematic, it reveals the underlying themes of Larkin's entire oeuvre. |
| philip larkin library: Reading Philip Larkin: Selected Poems John Gilroy, 2012-06-01 Our best-selling poetry introduction offers a detailed commentary on the poetry of Philip Larkin, exploring the political and cultural contexts which have shaped his contemporary reputation. Part 1, Life and Times, traces Larkin's early years and follows his development, within his career as a university librarian, into one of the most important and popular voices in twentieth-century poetry. Part 2, Artistic Strategies, explores a range of methodologies and aesthetic influences by which Larkin was empowered to create poetry at once both accessible and profound. Part 3, Reading Larkin, provides detailed critical commentary on many of the poems from his three major collections, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows. Part 4, Reception, outlines the history of Larkin's reputation from the mid-1950s to the present, examining the debates to which his poetry has given rise. John Gilroy teaches at Anglia Ruskin University and for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. |
| philip larkin library: Larkinland Jonathan Tulloch, 2017-07-24 Arriving in 1950s Hull, Arthur Merryweather finds himself lodging with the landlady from hell, and falling in love with fellow librarian Niamh O'Leary. But just as their love threatens to bloom, the mystery of Mr Bleaney, the enigmatic insurance salesman who rented his room before him, threatens to pull the poet into disaster and cast him into the criminal hinterland of 'fish town', that sublimely banal Larkinland 'beached on the mudflats at the end of the railway line, like a brick seal with a woodbine in its gob'. Hilarious, hugely enjoyable and deeply moving, Larkinland is the most compelling love story, mystery and biographical novel you are likely to read. A pitch-perfect realisation of Larkin's poetic world, the author also cooks up his own set of moving misadventures, which reveal the loneliness, commonplaces, fears, lusts and hope we all must face. Drawing on meetings with the women in Larkin's life, Larkinland casts startlingly fresh light on one of Britain's greatest ever poets. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin: Letters Home Philip Larkin, 2018-10-30 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. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin, Popular Culture, and the English Individual J. Ryan Hibbett, 2019-02-18 Despite the denigrating revelations of his published letters, Philip Larkin looms larger than ever, both as an English national icon and as a championed voice of postwar English poetry. Philip Larkin, Popular Culture, and the English Individual seeks to move beyond the decades-long preoccupation with Larkin’s reputation and canonical status, approaching Larkin instead as part of a persevering cultural phenomenon through which the traditionally distinguished individual is reconstituted in the company of the ordinary and the interchangeable. It tracks how Larkin’s poetic texts negotiate and engage with representations of popular culture at a time when notions of celebrity, authenticity, and cultural authority were newly (and deeply) unsettled by rock and roll, and when cultural capital had become a coveted substitute for diminished imperial wealth. From his unprecedented f-bombs to his cultivation of a familiar, comedic personality, this book examines how Larkin realigns common social practices and popular art forms—be it attending a church service, watching television, or enjoying a concert—to the isolated, knowing gaze of the individual. |
| philip larkin library: Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985 Philip Larkin, 1993 |
| philip larkin library: High Windows Philip Larkin, 2012-10-04 When Philip Larkin's High Windows first appeared, Kingsley Amis spoke for a large and loyal readership when he wrote: 'Larkin's admirers need only be told that he is as good as ever here, if not slightly better.' Like Betjeman and Hardy, Larkin is a poet who can move a large audience - without betraying the highest artistic standards. The poems in High Windows illustrate Larkin's unrivalled ability to bring lyrical expression to ordinary, urban lives. It is a gift that makes him one of the most truly popular of the twentieth century's poets. |
| philip larkin library: The Importance of Elsewhere Richard Bradford, 2017-09-26 A beautifully produced book ... the photographs display the full range of his poetic sensibility, from the melancholic to the comical The New Yorker Larkin's photographs not only illustrate his poems - they explain and deepen them...superlative, succinct and subtle biographical commentary The Times The most widely read British poet of the twentieth century, Philip Larkin was also a keen amateur photographer and through his life he made images of the people, places and things that meant most to him. The Importance of Elsewhere gathers the best of Larkin's photographic work, divided into short thematic chapters arranged in chronological order. Written by Richard Bradford, the acclaimed author of the Larkin biography First Boredom, Then Fear, the book shows how Larkin, as an individual, as a writer and indeed as a photographer, developed an acute sensitivity to all aspects of the world around him, from his love of open uninhabited landscapes and empty churches to his mixed feelings about crowds. There are also fascinating portraits of those people who were closest to Larkin, including his lovers, his mother and his literary peers. The book beautifully reproduces more than 200 images from the Larkin archive at Hull: the majority have never previously been seen in print. A substantial foreword by Mark Haworth-Booth, formerly curator of photography at the V&A, explores what it meant to be a serious amateur photographer of Larkin's generation. Together with Larkin's literary works and his letters, these images make up the third, so far unseen, constituent of the material upon which our future perceptions of him will be based. |
| philip larkin library: Such Deliberate Disguises: The Art of Philip Larkin Richard Palmer, 2008-05-01 Such Deliberate Disguises: The Art of Philip Larkin argues that a true understanding of Philip Larkin as man and poet lies beyond his enduring public appeal and the variety of criticism that has recently been applied to his work. Richard Palmer suggests that the ostensible simplicity of Larkin's writing, which continues to attract so many readers to him, is deceptive, masking as it does one of the richest and most resonant of oeuvres in twentieth-century poetry. Penetrating the many masks of Larkin, the book sheds new and considerable light on the hitherto largely ignored spiritual significance of his work. Based upon close and scrupulous reading of the poems themselves, it draws upon insights gained from the history of art and the study of religion and myth as much as literary criticism and personal biography. It also brings long-overdue attention to what is seen to be perhaps the chief love, and operative aesthetic force, of Larkin's life: jazz. Such Deliberate Disguises is thus a major contribution, not just to Larkin studies, but to the wider cultural history of our times. |
| philip larkin library: Required Writing Philip Larkin, 2012-12-20 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.' |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin’s Poetics István D. Rácz, 2015-11-24 In Philip Larkin’s Poetics István D. Rácz offers a reading of Larkin’s credo that systematically discusses the links between his principles and practice – a discussion notably absent up to now from the many studies of this outstanding post-1945 British poet. While Larkin claimed that his poetry did not need any explication, Rácz argues that a careful reading reveals a coherent poetics. This thoroughgoing discussion of the oeuvre provides ample evidence that Larkin’s poetry of interacting opposites creates a logically organized system based on principles to be found in his poetics. |
| philip larkin library: The Oxford Book of Twentieth-century English Verse Philip Larkin, 1973 Anthology of about 600 poems from more than 200 twentieth century English poets. |
| philip larkin library: Collected Poems Philip Larkin, 1990 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. |
| philip larkin library: Stray Home Amy M. Clark, 2010 Winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry 2009 With poems that combine the self-scrutiny of Philip Larkin with the measure of Elizabeth Bishop, Amy M. Clark burnishes her first collection, Stray Home, with exquisite understatement and formal control. Sweeter than Larkin and more intimate than Bishop, these poems address the suppressed pain and shame of living as a childless woman in a world of mothers, the dissociation attendant on depression and fraught family relationships, and the search for a sense of belonging in the face of dislocation. Stray Home cuts deeply to discover the buried emotions and insights universal to all suffering and compassionate human beings. Clark is able to imbue our small, usually overlooked moments with unexpected grandeur. A quiet humor is employed in service of her twin gifts, imagination and metaphor. This is an accomplished, deft, and important debut.-Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Tender Hooks and judge AMY M. CLARK grew up in San Luis Obispo, California. She is a graduate of Carleton College, and holds degrees from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Spalding University's MFA Program. She works as an editor and divides her time between Concord, Massachusetts, and San Diego, California. Her poems have been published in The Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review, and 32 Poems. Number Seventeen: Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry |
| philip larkin library: Collected Poems Philip Larkin, 2004-04-01 One of the best-known and best-loved poets of the English-speaking world, Philip Larkin had only a small number of poems published during his lifetime. Collected Poems brings together not only all his books--The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows--but also his uncollected poems from 1940 to 1984. This new edition reflects Larkin's own ordering for his poems and is the first collection to present the body of his work with the organization he preferred. Preserving everything he published in his lifetime, the new Collected Poems is an indispensable contribution to the legacy of an icon of twentieth-century poetry. |
| philip larkin library: Libraries in Literature Alice Crawford, Robert Crawford, 2022-09-30 Unashamedly a book for the bookish, yet accessible and frequently entertaining, this is the first book devoted to how libraries are depicted in imaginative writing. Covering fiction, poetry, and drama from the late Middle Ages to the present, it runs the gamut of British and American literature, as well as examining a range of fiction in other languages--from Rabelais and Cervantes to modern and contemporary French, Italian, Japanese, and Russian writing. While the tropes of the complex catalogue and the bibliomaniacal reader persist throughout the centuries, libraries also emerge as societal battle-sites where issues of personality, gender, cultural power, and national identity are contested repeatedly and often in surprising ways. As well as examining how libraries were deployed in their work by canonical authors from Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Swift to Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Jorge Luis Borges, the volume also examines in detail the haunted libraries of Margaret Oliphant and M. R. James, and a range of much less familiar historic and contemporary authors. Alert to the depiction of librarians as well as of book-rooms and institutional readers, this book will inform, entertain, and delight. At a time when traditional libraries are under pressure, Libraries in Literature shows the power of their lasting fascination. |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin Robert C. Evans, 2017-09-16 Philip Larkin is widely regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the 20th century. As such, there is a vast amount of literary criticism surrounding his work. This Readers' Guide provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the key reactions to Larkin's poetry. Using a chronological structure, Robert C. Evans charts critical responses to Larkin's work from his arrival on the British literary scene in the 1950s to the decades after his death. This includes analyses of critical material from around the world, making this an excellent guide for all students of Larkin. |
| philip larkin library: Bold Minds Margaret Weaver, Leo Appleton, 2020-11-10 Are librarians and libraries relevant in the 21st century? This is a fundamental question and one that presents differing opinions across the many diverse information sectors. If there is a continuing need for libraries and for librarians, then how do library leaders obtain strategic support when there appears to be a lack of clarity or understanding about the very purpose of libraries at a time when economically, libraries are under pressure to develop new business models and be more commercially focussed? Bold Minds: Library leadership in a time of disruption brings together international leaders who frame many aspects of the current library provision and who carry responsibility for the library models of the future to consider how librarians and libraries can be a driving force in a time of disruptive economic, technological and cultural change. Each chapter critically presents a short leadership provocation regarding libraries and their purpose, encompassing impact, service delivery, collections, staff skills and professional training and assessing what it means for leaders, their sectors and organisations, and how they have developed their personal leadership signature. This book will be invaluable to library and information professionals in a range of public and private sector libraries as well as policy makers in services where libraries are a component. It will also be useful for students, educational establishments, and IT professionals with an information management element to their work. |
| philip larkin library: Unpacking the Personal Library Jason Camlot, J.A. Weingarten, 2022-07-01 Unpacking the Personal Library: The Public and Private Life of Books is an edited collection of essays that ponders the cultural meaning and significance of private book collections in relation to public libraries. Contributors explore libraries at particular moments in their history across a wide range of cases, and includes Alberto Manguel’s account of the Library of Alexandria as well as chapters on library collecting in the middle ages, the libraries of prime ministers and foreign embassies, protest libraries and the slow transformation of university libraries, and the stories of the personal libraries of Virginia Woolf, Robert Duncan, Sheila Watson, Al Purdy and others. The book shows how the history of the library is really a history of collection, consolidation, migration, dispersal, and integration, where each story negotiates private and public spaces. Unpacking the Personal Library builds on and interrogates theories and approaches from library and archive studies, the history of the book, reading, authorship and publishing. Collectively, the chapters articulate a critical poetics of the personal library within its extended social, aesthetic and cultural contexts. |
| philip larkin library: Jill Philip Larkin, 2005 'It will, I hope, still qualify for the indulgence traditionally extended to juvenilia,' wrote Philip Larkin, almost twenty years after the publication of his first novel. But Jill, with its exact evocation of place - Oxford in 1940 - and astute insight into character, emotions and social nuance, requires no such indulgence. It is a classic of its time, and shows many of the qualities that were later to distinguish Larkin's great, mature poetry.'Jill is, in a sense, a kind of cryptic manifesto. It is a novel about writing, about discovering a literary personality, and about the sorts of consolation that art can provide.' Andrew Motion |
| philip larkin library: Philip Larkin Brian Dyson, Geoff Weston, 1986 |
| philip larkin library: The Beautiful Librarians Sean O'Brien, 2015-03-31 Each poem in Sean O'Brien's superb new collection opens on a wholly different room, vista or landscape, each drawn with the poet's increasingly refined sense of tone, history and rhetorical assurance. The Beautiful Librarians is a stock-taking of sorts, and a celebration of those unsung but central figures in our culture, often overlooked by both capital and official account. Here we find infantrymen, wrestlers, old lushes in the hotel bar - but none more heroic than the librarians of the title, those silent and silencing guardians of literature and knowledge who, the poet reminds us, also had lives of their own to be celebrated. Elsewhere we find a 12-bar blues sung by Ovid, a hymn to a grey rose, a writing course from hell, and a very French exercise in waiting. A book of terrific variety of theme and form, The Beautiful Librarians is another bravura performance from the most garlanded English poet of his generation. |
| philip larkin library: The Odd Couple Richard Bradford, 2012-10-30 Kingsley Amis was a mimic, jester, father, husband, atheist, pseudo-socialist and clubland Tory boozer with a limitless taste for adultery; Philip Larkin a glum misanthrope who lived in self-imposed solitude. And yet, after meeting at St John's, Oxford in 1941, this unlikely pair struck up a friendship to endure for more than forty years, despite a period of acrimony in the 1960s. From their early days of undergraduate ambitions and enthusiasms through to the bitterness of middle age, Richard Bradford charts the progress of a remarkable friendship, and shows how crucial it was to the making of these two literary giants. Without Larkin's inspiration and input, Amis would never have written his award-winning debut, Lucky Jim; if not for Amis's overnight success, Larkin would never have abandoned his hopes of becoming a novelist and turned instead to verse. Larkin's ensuing resentment would simmer beneath the surface of their relationship for years to come. Drawing on an enormous archive of letters, manuscripts and interviews, The Odd Couple not only offers a rare glimpse into the private correspondence of two controversial and eccentric men, it also illuminates some of the finest novels and poems of the twentieth century. |
| philip larkin library: Joy Or Night Seamus Heaney, 1993 |
| philip larkin library: "A Study Guide for Philip Larkin's ""MCMXIV""" Gale, Cengage, 2018-12-13 A Study Guide for Philip Larkin's MCMXIV, excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs. |
| philip larkin library: Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries Department of Information & Collections, 2005-12-21 The Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries aims at recording articles of scholarly value which relate to the history of the printed book, to the history of arts, crafts, techniques and equipment, and of the economic social and cultural environment, involved in its production, distribution, conservation and description. |
| philip larkin library: Monica Jones, Philip Larkin and Me John Sutherland, 2021-04-15 '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. |
