Philip Larkin (Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism, 36) - Softcover

Evans, Robert C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1137517107 ISBN 13: 9781137517104

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016

Synopsis

Philip Larkin is widely regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the twentieth 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert C. Evans is Professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery, USA. He is author of Perspectives on World War I Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2014) and (with Eric Sterling) The Continuum Handbook of Seventeenth-Century Literature (Continuum Press, 2010), among many other titles.

Review:

[Evans] has done the field a great service with this lean summary of Larkin's critical reception.. . . The systematic working-through of critical material which this volume represents has numerous benefits. Many of them are practical, including the fact that, alongside the expected names - Anthony Thwaite, Andrew Motion, James Booth,John Osborne, and so on - difficult-to-access and/or forgotten sources are also well-represented here. . . . In enabling readers to trace and consider these longer [critical] narratives, this Readers' Guide is not just a useful pedagogical tool but itself a contribution to the ways in which we might think about Larkin. . . . In roughly 140 pages (excluding notes and bibliographies), this volume very efficiently tells the story of how we got where we are in Larkin studies. I have certainly found it useful to read while working on my own book on Larkin, though I am yet to decide whether to thank or forgive the author for all the additional  references that will now need chasing up. I will not hesitate in future to recommend this as an essential first port of call for new students beginning substantive undergraduate or postgraduate research on Larkin. Although 'scholarly' in the sense that it is a synthesis of existing scholarship, this book might also be enjoyed by those with more than a general interest in Larkin's life and work - that is to say, for those curious enough to wonder about how and why writers' reputations are made, unmade, and remade. - James Underwood, About Larkin (journal of the Philip Larkin Society)

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1137517107
• ISBN 13: 9781137517104
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184