Philip Larkin
born August 9, 1922, Coventry,
Warwickshire, England
died December 2, 1985, Kingston upon Hull
most representative and highly regarded
of the poets who gave expression to a
clipped, antiromantic sensibility prevalent
in English verse in the 1950s.
Larkin was educated at the University of
Oxford on a scholarship, an experience that
provided material for his first novel, Jill
(1946; rev. ed. 1964). (His first book of
poetry, The North Ship, was published at his
own expense in 1945.) Another novel, A Girl
in Winter, followed in 1947. He became well
known with The Less Deceived (1955), a
volume of verse the title of which suggests
Larkin’s reaction and that of other British
writers who then came into notice (e.g.,
Kingsley Amis and John Wain) against the
political enthusiasms of the 1930s and what
they saw as the emotional excesses of the
poetry of the ’40s. His own verse is not
without emotion, but it tends to be
understated.
Larkin became librarian at the University
of Hull in Yorkshire in 1955 and was jazz
critic for The Daily Telegraph (1961–71),
from which occupation were gleaned the
essays in All What Jazz: A Record Diary
1961–68 (1970). The Whitsun Weddings (1964)
and High Windows (1974) are his later
volumes of poetry. He edited the Oxford Book
of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973).
Required Writing (1982) is a collection of
miscellaneous essays.
