Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 CONTENTS Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 Places Larkin’s poetry in its biographical, cultural, and historical con- texts, paying particular attention to his typical themes and stylistic traits and the specific characteristics of each of his major collec- tions. Traces the trajectory of his career, from his early association with the new trend in mid-1950s poetry known as ‘The Movement’ to his eventual near-silence by the late 1970s. Discusses the con- troversies that arose after publication, in the early 1990s, of his selected letters and a major biography. CHAPTER ONE 8 Larkin Arrives: The 1950s and 1960s Discusses the rise of Larkin’s reputation from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s – a rise fuelled by the publication of two of his most significant collections: The Less Deceived (1955) and The Whitsun Weddings (1964). Discusses commentary by (among many others) Richard Murphy, John Wain, Howard Sergeant, G. S. Fraser, William Stafford, Philip Gardner, and Keith Sagar. CHAPTER TWO 28 Larkin Rises: The 1970s Surveys the firm status Larkin achieved, during the 1970s, as per- haps the major English poet of his time. Discusses the impact of his last important collection, High Windows (1975), and the possible reasons for his eventual near-abandonment of poetry by the end of the decade. Analyses criticism by such writers as Anthony Thwaite, David Timms, Lolette Kuby, Hermann Peschmann, Bruce Martin, David Lodge, and David Cushman. vii Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER THREE 48 Larkin Triumphant: The 1980s Comments on the irony that Larkin, now considered the most beloved of English poets, had by the early 1980s essentially ceased writing poems. Notes that after his death he was, if anything, even more revered than before, especially thanks to the 1988 appearance of his Collected Poems, which contained a number of previously unpublished and/or uncollected works. Commentary surveyed includes work by such authors as Grevel Lindop, Roger Elliott, Terry Whalen, Salem K. Hassan, G. Singh, Peter MacDonald Smith, and Janice Rossen. CHAPTER FOUR 70 Larkin Under Siege: The 1990s Recounts the controversy that arose in the early 1990s when Lar- kin’s Selected Letters were published and were then soon followed by the publication of the first major biography. Both volumes revealed a Larkin who surprised and disappointed many readers because of his alleged racism, sexism, and apparent selfishness. Demonstrates that by the end of the decade, however, most critics had come to the conclusion that whatever his failings may have been as a per- son, he was still one of the best poets of his time. Commentators whose ideas are discussed include Stephen Watson, A. T. Tolley, Peter Snowdon, James Booth, Stephen Regan, Andrew Motion, Paul Volsik, and Andrew Swarbrick. CHAPTER FIVE 94 Larkin Triumphant Once More: The 2000s Explores the ways in which Larkin’s reputation continued to recover from the blows it had suffered in the early 1990s. Critics now increas- ingly paid attention to the success of Larkin’s poems as poems and to their thematic, stylistic, and technical complexities. Shows how ­Larkin was now often seen as ahead of his time in some of his basic philosophical attitudes and also discusses how some of his own expla- nations of his art were open to question. Critics whose views of Larkin are discussed include John Carey, Raphaël Ingelbien, Victoria Longino, Stephen Cooper, James Booth, Richard Bradford, Adrian Grafe, Tijana Stojkovic´, Sisir Kumar Chatterjee, A. Banerjee, and John Osborne. Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER SIX 116 Newer Approaches to Larkin: The 2010s Studies commentary from 2010 up to early 2016, showing the diver- sity of approaches that now existed to a writer increasingly seen, even more than before, as the major poet of his time. Analysts now tended to explore unexpected aspects of Larkin’s works, such as his debts to Symbolism and Romanticism, the ways his writings might be seen as postmodern, and the ways his works lent themselves to analysis using recent critical theories, especially various kinds of particularly close (even deconstructive) reading. Analysts whose comments on Larkin are surveyed include Gillian Steinberg, M. W. Rowe, Peter Holbrook, Carol Atherton, John Osborne, James Booth, Ryan Hibbett, and István Rácz. CONCLUSION 136 Discusses some reasons for Larkin’s enduring popularity, providing an overview of his typical themes and stylistic traits and a survey of the development of his reputation. Offers suggestions about future directions for Larkin studies and the kinds of resources that might prove most helpful to readers in general and scholars in particular. NOTES 142 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 INDEX 164 Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 CHAPTER ONE Larkin Arrives: The 1950s and 1960s Much of the earliest commentary on Philip Larkin’s poetry compared and contrasted his work with that of various predecessors and con- temporaries. Early critics were especially interested in his similarities to – or differences from – important poets of the first half of the twen- tieth century. These included Hardy, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Auden, and Dylan Thomas. Critics also often wanted to ‘place’ Larkin in relation to other writers emerging in the 1950s, including John Wain, Thom Gunn, Kingsley Amis, and Ted Hughes (to mention just a few). Lar- kin was often either praised or censured depending on critics’ personal attitudes towards the kind of writing associated with a loose grouping of writers sometimes called ‘The Movement’. Other issues explored by commentators in the 1950s and 1960s involved whether or not Larkin was ‘developing’ as a poet – that is, whether or not he was evolving in style, themes, and attitudes. Some critics argued that his vision was nar- row, his tone monotonous, and his style repetitive. Others disagreed, arguing that all that mattered was his poetry’s consistent excellence and the ways he honestly and even profoundly addressed genuine human concerns. Commentary during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s tended to focus on two of his major collections – The Less Deceived (1955) and The Whitsun Weddings (1964). That second collection, in particu- lar, helped win him an especially wide readership and helped earn him broad critical acclaim. Larkin in the Mid- to Late-1950s Anthony Hartley, writing in 1954, was one of the first critics who saw both Larkin and the ‘Movement’ as reacting against the kind of ‘wild and whirling’ Romanticism associated with Dylan Thomas 8 Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 Copyrighted material – 9781137517104 LarKin ArriVeS: The 1950s anD 1960s 9 and mystical flights of fancy. Instead these new authors attempted to write poetry that was calm rather than high-flown, colloquial rather than lofty, understated and ironic rather than excited and prophetic. (Hartley, however, was also one of the earliest of many critics to note that Larkin’s range of tones and topics was wider than those of some other ‘Movement’ writers.)1 Donald Davie spoke for many in char- acterising the ‘Movement’ poets as ‘sceptical, robust, ironic, [and] prepared to be as comfortable as possible in a wicked, commercial, threatened world which doesn’t look, anyway, as if it’s going to be changed much by a couple of handfuls of young English writers’.2 Some readers welcomed this new kind of writing; others disdained it. Larkin, as one its best representatives, was either celebrated or condemned accordingly. Writing in 1955, Richard Murphy was one of the first critics to give Larkin himself sustained attention. He praised Larkin for writing (real- istically and without moaning or protest) about the kinds of lives most people lived, although he did call Larkin’s ‘Mr. Bleaney’ an example of a ‘poetry of despair’. In an especially succinct summary of Larkin’s typical tone and themes, Murphy asserted that: JJLarkin is a poet who portrays things as they are with thorough accu- racy. He does not try to change things, but express them. It is an austere satisfaction he gives. He writes, even in verse, in the bare idiom of his contemporaries, with conversational manners, and a deliberate dryness, to express a problem with flawless precision. But he surpasses his gen- eration, now and then, in writing memorable lines and in depth of feeling. Behind the shrug of his shoulders is not a witticism, but actual suffering; behind his caustic comments or carefully noted situations lie experience and imagination.3 Here, then, is a note already foreshadowed by Hartley and repeated in much subsequent criticism: Larkin not only resembles many ‘Move- ment’ writers but also surpasses them. He is both typical and distinct. Thus an anonymous reviewer for the important Times Literary Supple- ment asserted, also in 1955, that Larkin resembled his contemporaries in various ways but managed to avoid the unconvincing ‘posture of cynical toughness’ that hampered much of their writing. The reviewer argued that The Less Deceived ‘should establish … Larkin as a poet of quite exceptional importance; he has a mature vision and the power to render it variously, precisely and movingly’.4 By mid-July 1956, a prominent profile of Larkin called him ‘one of the most successful poets of his generation’ and praised him not only for rejecting the ‘formless mystifications of the last 20 years’ but also for bringing English poetry back into touch