Philip Larkin Summary

Biography EssayIn a time when popular reception of poetry is perhaps more tenuous than in any period since the Wordsworthian revolution, Philip Larkin has managed to capture a loyal, wide, and growing... Read more

[This entry was updated by Bruce K. Martin (Drake University) from his entry in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 200-211.]In a time when popular reception of poetry ... Read more

Critical Essay by Anthony Thwaite The unanswerable perfection of [Larkin's] best poems, the inevitable finish which leaves nothing to be said, are so apparent that one has heard such comments ... Read more

Critical Essay by Pearl K. Bell [In his third collection, High Windows], as in The Less Deceived and The Whitsun Weddings (one small and dazzling book every 10 years), [Larkin] writes with enormously... Read more

Critical Essay by Bruce K. Martin Never having felt quite comfortable with the various notions of poetry derived from others, [in the late 1940s Larkin] realized that he could depend on his own feeli... Read more

Critical Essay by Merle Brown Readers of Philip Larkin's poetry keep writing about it, even though they recognize how simple and clear it is, because they also sense that its most distinctive ... Read more

Critical Essay by Michael Schmidt [Larkin] has not, apparently, coveted the praise that has been lavished on him—praise he neither fully merits nor, perhaps, relishes. And nor has he been prol... Read more

In the following essay, Thwaite weaves Larkin's own commentary on his work into a chronological overview of his corpus. There is a certain irony about sitting down to write a critical paper ... Read more

Below, Kuby examines Larkin's place among British poets, specifically his relationship to the modernist school. Facets of Larkin's style point to several progenitors. In many ways his... Read more

In the following review of Collected Poems, Brookhiser examines the language and content of Larkin's poems, concluding that "his world looks severly limited." The Collected Poe... Read more

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) wrote The Whitsun Weddings in 1964. This poetry collection can be viewed as a `satiric sociological commentary' that `combines the provincial and national' in his representat... Read more