Philip Larkin: Letters Home

Philip Larkin; Ed. James Booth

ISBN 10: 0571335608 / ISBN 13: 9780571335602

Published by Faber, 2022

About this Item

The letters that Philip Larkin wrote to his parents and his beloved sister Kitty range from his schooldays to his life as a successful middle-aged poet. Published here for the first time, with an introduction and timeline, they are warm, witty and affectionate, while those to Kitty as their mother succumbed to dementia shed light on the bleakness of his later verse.

Seller Inventory # 546460

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Philip Larkin: Letters Home
• Publisher: Faber
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571335608
• ISBN 13: 9780571335602
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The last outstanding unpublished facet of Larkin's writing life: his correspondence 'home' to his father, mother and sister. Letters Home helps tell the story of how Larkin came to be the writer and the man he was: to his father Sydney, a 'conservative anarchist' and admirer of Hitler, who died relatively early in Larkin’s life; to his timid, depressive mother Eva, who by contrast lived long, and whose final years were shadowed by dementia; and to his sister Kitty, the sparse surviving fragment of whose correspondence with her brother gives an enigmatic glimpse of a complex and intimate relationship. In particular, it was the years during which he and his sister looked after their mother that shaped the writer we know so well: a number of poems written over this time are for her, and the mood of pain, shadow and despondency that characterises his later verse draws its strength from his experience of the long, lonely years of her senility. One surprising element in the volume, however, is the joie de vivre shown in the large number of witty and engaging drawings of himself and Eva, as 'Young Creature' and 'Old Creature', with which he enlivens his letters throughout the three decades of her widowhood. This important edition, meticulously edited by James Booth is a key piece of scholarship that completes the portrait of this most cherished of English poets.

About the Author

Philip Larkin was born in Coventry in 1922. As well as his volumes of poems, which include The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, he wrote two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and two books of collected journalism: All What Jazz: A Record Diary and Required Writing: Miscellaneous Prose. He worked as a librarian at the University of Hull from 1955 until his death in 1985. He was the best-loved poet of his generation, and the recipient of innumerable honours, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and the WH Smith Award.