Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was born on 9th August 1922, in Coventry to Sydney and Eva Larkin. He had an older sister called Catherine. He was educated at the highly academic King Henry VIII School between 1930 and 1940, and then went on to study at St. John’s College, Oxford. Because of his poor eyesight he failed the army medical examination and avoided World War II military service. He was therefore able to complete his degree uninterrupted, and gained a first class degree in English. Two novels, ‘Jill’ and ‘A Girl in Winter’ were published in 1946 and 1947 respectively.

In 1946, Larkin became assistant Librarian at the University College of Leicester. In October 1950, he became Sub-Librarian at Queen’s University, Belfast, and in 1951, had a small collection published, entitled ‘XX Poems’. Larkin took up the position of Librarian at the University of Hull in 1955, and that year his collection ‘The Less Deceived’ was published. This collection would be the foundation of his reputation as one of the foremost figures in 20th-century poetry.

Not until 1964 was his next collection, ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ published. Again, the poems were widely acclaimed. The following year, Larkin was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
He also edited the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, which was published in 1973.

His last collection, ‘High Windows’, was published in 1974, and confirmed him as one of the finest poets in English literary history. ‘Aubade’, his last great poem, was published in The Times Literary Supplement in December 1977.

Larkin belonged to a poetry group known as ‘The Movement’, consisting of like-minded English poets, This grew up in the 1950s as a reaction to other trends, for example, Romantic, Symbolist and Imagistic poetry, and also a rejection of the style of poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. H. Auden. Instead, they sought to to return to the tradition represented by Thomas Hardy, of formal verse and accessibility, and relating to everyday experience.

Larkin had a not undeserved reputation for pessimism, misogyny and snobbery, and this is born out in many of his poems, for example “Afternoons” and “Whitsun Weddings”. But he has earned great popularity, being one of the most popular of the poets of the “Movement”. Others also emerged, however, for example Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, and Robert Conquest. Many were academics and critics.

Larkin received many awards in recognition of his writing. In 1975 he was awarded a CBE, was made Companion of Literature in 1978, and served on the Literature Panel of the Arts between 1980 and 1982. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Library Association in 1980. In December 1984 he was offered the chance to succeed Sir John Betjeman as Poet Laureate but declined, unwilling to accept the high public profile and media attention of the position.

In 1985 Larkin died of cancer, at the age of sixty-five.