Philip Larkin: A Literary Life

by James Booth

This book explores Larkin's distinctive place within the poetry of the twentieth century. It includes discussion of Larkin's response to the academic professionalization of poetry fostered by "difficult" Modernism; his diverse poetry of love (in relation to the responses of the poems' addressees); his original development of the genres of reflective elegy and self-elegy; the key metaphor of the domestic interior; history versus historicism; the poetry of place ("here" or Hull); and the profane and sacred (focusing on his animal poems).

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 3, 2012

About the author

James Booth has written extensively on Philip Larkin. Booth has recently retired from the Department of English at the University of Hull, where he had been Larkin's colleague for seventeen years.

The distinction between Booth's and Andrew Motion's biographies is, in Booth's own words:

"His (Motion's) biography is a magnificent achievement, but he is not on Larkin's wavelength when it comes to humour".

However, despite praising Motion's achievement in this regard, Booth adds that:

"I think Motion took Larkin too much at his own word. When Larkin said he was a sour brute who didn't treat his mother well, he believed him. In fact, Larkin wrote two letters to his mother every week for 40-odd years."

Booth's writing is defined by his admiration for one of Britain's most beloved poets of the twentieth-century:

"I have always loved his poetry and love is the right word"