Philip Larkin

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Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-85), an English poet, novelist, and librarian, died on August 2, 1985.

In 1945, his first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published, along with two books, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived (1964) and High Windows (1974).

He appeared in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and he edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973).

The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry was among his many awards.

Following Sir John Betjeman's death, he was offered, but he declined, the post of Poet Laureate in 1984. Larkin, who graduated from Oxford in 1943 with a first in English language and literature, became a librarian.

He wrote the bulk of his published work during the thirty years he served as a university librarian at Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull.

Life

Philip Larkin was born on August 9th, 1922, on the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884-1948) and his mother Eva Emily (1886–1977), daughter of first-class excise officer William James Day, was born in 1922. The Larkin family originated in Kent but had lived in Lichfield, Staffordshire, for at least the eighteenth century, where they first worked as tailors, then as coach-builders and shoe-makers. The Day family lived in Epping, Essex, but the family moved to Leigh, Lancashire, where William Day took charge of pensions and other dependent allowances.

Until Larkin was five years old, the Larkin family lived in Radford, Coventry, before transferring to a three-story middle-class house with servants' quarters near Coventry railway station and King Henry VIII School in Manor Road. They were demolished in the 1960s to begin a road modernization program, which included the construction of an inner ring road. Catherine, also known as Kitty, was ten years older than he was. His father, a self-made man who had risen to become Coventry City Treasurer, was a unique individual, who combined a love of literature with a love for Nazism, and had attended two Nuremberg rallies in the mid-1930s. He introduced his son to the work of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and above all D. Lawrence. His mother was a tumultuous and passive woman, "a kind of defective device." Her ideal is "to collapse" and be taken care of," according to her husband.

In some respects, Larkin's early life was unusual: he was not educated at home until the age of eight by his mother and sister, no friends nor relatives ever visited the family's house, and he had a stammer. Despite this, when he started Coventry's King Henry VIII Junior School he immediately embraced and developed close, long-standing friendships, including those with James "Jim" Sutton, Colin Gunner, and Noel "Josh" Hughes. Though his home life was relatively simple, Larkin's parents received a lot of help from his parents. For example, his deep passion for jazz was aided by the purchase of a drum kit and a saxophone, which was supplemented by a DownBeat subscription. He went from the junior school to King Henry VIII Senior School. He did not do well when he sat his School Certificate exam at the age of 16. Despite his results, he was able to keep attending school; two years later he earned distinctions in English and History; and he passed the entrance exams for St John's College, Oxford, to read English.

Larkin started at Oxford University in October 1940, a year after the Second World War's outbreak. The old upper-class traditions of university life had, at least for the time being, devolved, and the majority of male students were studying for highly truncated degrees. Larkin skipped his military medical exam but was able to study for the first three years due to his poor eyesight. Kingsley Amis, who sparked his enthusiasm for ridicule and irreverence, and who remained a close friend throughout Larkin's life, was introduced by his tutor, Norman Iles. Amis, Larkin, and other university students formed "The Seven," a group that met to discuss each other's poetry, listen to jazz, and drink jubilantly. He had his first real social contact with the opposite sex at this period, but there was no romantic progress made during this period. He sat his finals in 1943, and, having devoted much of his time to his own writing, was delighted to receive a first-class honours degree.

In 1943, Larkin was appointed librarian of the public library in Wellington, Shropshire. Ruth Bowman, an academically gifted 16-year-old schoolgirl, was working there when he first met his first girlfriend, Ruth Bowman, in early 1944. Ruth decided to continue her studies at King's College in London in 1945; during one of his visits, their friendship developed into a sexual relationship. Larkin had been halfway through qualifying for Library Association membership and had been appointed assistant librarian at University College, Leicester, Leicester, by June 1946. It was visiting Larkin in Leicester and discovering the university's Senior Common Room that inspired Kingsley Amis to write Lucky Jim (1954), the book that made Amis famous and to whose long gestation Larkin greatly contributed. Larkin proposed Ruth to Ruth six weeks after his father died from cancer in March 1948, and the couple spent their annual holiday in Hardy country this summer.

Larkin was appointed sub-librarian at The Queen's University of Belfast in June 1950, a post he took up in September. He and Ruth split up before his departure. At some point during the transition to Ruth and the end of the engagement, Larkin's acquaintance with Monica Jones, a lecturer at Leicester, developed into a sexual relationship. He spent five years in Belfast, which seem to have been the most contented of his life. Although Jones' friendship grew, he shared "the most exciting [experience] of his life] with Patsy Strang, who was in an open marriage with one of his coworkers at the time. At one point, she begged her husband to marry Larkin. From 1951 to Jones, Larkin holidayed with Jones in various locations around the British Isles. Although in Belfast, he had a long, but sexually undeveloped relationship with Winifred Arnott, the subject of "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album," which came to an end when she married in 1954. This was the time when he gave Kingsley Amis extensive advice on the writing of Lucky Jim. Amis paid the debt by entrusting the finished book to Larkin.

In 1955, Larkin became University Librarian at the University of Hull, a position he held until his death. "I was impressed with the time he spent in his office, arriving early and leaving late," Professor R. L. Brett, who chaired the library committee that named him and a friend, wrote. It was only later that I knew that his office was also his study, where he spent hours on his private writing as well as the library's duties. On a good many evenings, he'll be back home and begin writing again." He lodged in bedsits for the first year. In 1956, he rented a self-contained apartment on the top floor of 32 Pearson Park, a three-story red-brick house overlooking the park, before the American Consulate. This, it appears, was the vantage point later commemorated in the poem High Windows. "I never knew about Hull until I was here." I like it in many ways, especially since I'm here. It's a little off the edge of things, and I suspect even its natives would say that. I rather like being on the brink of things. One doesn't really go anywhere by design, you know, you put in for jobs and then flocked about, but you know, I've lived in other countries." Hull University underwent significant expansion in the postwar years, as was typical of British universities during that period. When Larkin took up his appointment there, the proposals for a new university library were still far from complete. He made a good effort in just a few months to familiarize himself with them before being submitted to the University Grants Committee; he recommended a number of emendations, some major and structural, some of which were adopted; It was constructed in two stages, and after Sir Brynmor Jones, the university's vice-chancellor, named it the Brynmor Jones Library in 1967.

One of Larkin's colleagues said he became a key figure in postwar British librarianship. Larkin computerized records for the entire library collection, making it Europe's first library to have a Geac computer system and an automated online circulation system ten years since its construction. Larkin excelled as an administrator, committee man, and arbitrator, according to Richard Goodman. "He treated his employees well and rewarded them," Goodman said. "He did this with a blend of effectiveness, high quality, humour, and compassion." He had never signed the Net Book Agreement. Betty Mackereth, Larkin's secretary, served from 1957 to his death. All of his coworkers knew Larkin's compartmentalized life, and she was intrigued as much as anyone. During his 30 years as librarian, the library's collection sextupled, and the budget increased from £4,500 to £448,500, or in real terms, a twelvefold increase.

Despite Larkin's strong Roman Catholic convictions, his friendship with Maeve Brennan began in February 1961. Despite Brennan's preference for smaller gatherings, she convinced him to attend a dance for university employees in early 1963. This seems to have been a pivotal moment in their relationship, and he recalled it in his longest (and unfinished) poem "The Dance." Larkin learned to drive and bought a car around this time, his first, a Singer Gazelle. Monica Jones, who died in 1959, bought a holiday cottage in Haydon Bridge, which she and Larkin used to visit often. A poem titled "Show Saturday" by Keith Bellingham in the North Tyne valley in 1973 is a retort of the 1973 Bellingham show.

An edition of the arts programme Monitor, directed by Patrick Garland, appeared in 1964 following the publication of The Whitsun Weddings. Larkin was able to participate in the establishment of his own public persona thanks to the program, which shows him being interviewed by fellow poet John Betjeman in a number of locations in and around Hull; one of which he would like for his readers to imagine.

Larkin was given the OBE in 1968, but he declined. He accepted the privilege of being made a Companion of Honour later in life.

Larkin's participation in the creation of Hull University's new Brynmor Jones Library had been both important and requesting. He was able to redirect his energies shortly after the completion of the second and larger phase of construction in 1969. In October 1970, he began to work compiling a new anthology, The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973). He was granted a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, for two academic years, allowing him to use Oxford's Bodleian Library, a copyright library. Brenda Moon, he was in Oxford at the time, delegated the Library to his replacement. Larkin was a key contributor to Thomas Hardy's poetry re-evaluation, which had been overlooked in comparison to his books; in Larkin's "idiosyncratic" and "controversial" anthology, the poet was the most generously represented poet. There were twenty-seven poems by Hardy, out of nine by T. S. Eliot; despite this, Eliot is the most well-known for long poems; the other poets most well represented were W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, and Rudyard Kipling. Larkin had six of his own poems, the same number as for Rupert Brooke. As a result of compiling the volume, he was surprised not to find more and more poems as evidence that the clamour against the Modernists had stifled the voices of traditionalists. Auden and John Betjeman's most favourable responses to the anthology were those of Auden and John Betjeman, while Donald Davie, the most hostile of all philistinism, the cult of the amateur [and] the youngest kind of Englishry, was the most cynical. Larkin enjoyed the roar after a period of trembling over the anthology's reception.

In 1971, Larkin revived contact with his schoolfriend Colin Gunner, who had lived a life of idyllic. Since Larkin expressed right-wing views and used racist terms, their correspondence has gained notoriety. In the decade from 1973 to 1974, Larkin was an Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and was given honorary degrees by Warwick, St Andrews, and Sussex universities. Hull University told Larkin in January 1974 that they were going to burn the building on Pearson Park, where he lived. He bought a detached two-storey 1950s house in Newland Park, which was described by his university buddy John Kenyon as "completely middle-class backwater." Larkin, a retired poet who moved into the house in June, described the four-bedroom house as "eloquent of the human spirit's nobility."

Monica Jones, Larkin's official companion after splitting up with Maeve Brennan in August 1973, attended W. H. Auden's memorial service at Christ Church, Oxford, with Monica Jones as his official partner. The relationship with Brennan began in March 1975, and three weeks after that, he launched a mystery affair with Betty Mackereth, who served as his secretary for 28 years, who wrote the long-undiscovered poem "We met at the end of the party." Despite the logistical challenges of having three people in a row at the same time, the situation didn't persist until March 1978. He and Jones became a monogamous couple from then on.

On BBC's Desert Island Discs, Larkin appeared on BBC's Desert Island Discs in 1976. Louis Armstrong's "Dallas Blues," Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis, and the Symphony No. 10. Edward Elgar's 1 in a big apartment. Bessie Smith's "I'm Down in the Dumps" was his favorite piece.

In December 2010, the BBC broadcast Philip Larkin and the Third Woman, focusing on his friendship with Mackereth, which she talked for the first time. It included a reading of a recently discovered mystery poem, Dear Jake, and that Mackereth was one of the inspirations for his writings.

In 1982, Larkin reached the age of sixty. The most notable contribution to this collection of essays titled Larkin at Sixty, edited by Anthony Thwaite and published by Faber and Faber was Larkin at Sixty. Two television shows were also available: Melvyn Bragg's episode on The South Bank Show, where Larkin made off-camera appearances, and a half-hour special on the BBC that was planned and delivered by Labour Shadow Cabinet Minister Roy Hattersley.

Jones had shingles and a skin rash in 1983. The severity of her illness, as well as its effects on her eyes, has caused Larkin's death. As her health worsened, regular care became vital: within a month, she moved into his Newland Park home and remained there for the remainder of her life.

Larkin, a student who died in July 1984, was asked if he would accept the position of Poet Laureate at the memorial service. He resigned, not least because he felt he had long since stopped being a writer of poetry in a meaningful sense. Larkin began suffering from oesophageal cancer the following year. He underwent surgery on June 11, 1985, but his cancer did not spread and was inoperable. He died on Friday and was admitted to the hospital on Monday. He died four days later, on December 2, 1985, at the age of 63, and was buried in Cottingham municipal cemetery near Hull.

On his deathbed, Larkin demanded that his diaries be destroyed. Jones, the principal beneficiary of his estate, and Betty Mackereth received the request and then burned the unread diaries page by page. His will was discovered to be contradictory about his other personal papers and unpublished work; legal guidance left the issue in his literary executors' discretion, who determined that the information should not be destroyed. Jones died on February 15, 2001, leaving £1 million to St Paul's Cathedral, Hexham Abbey, and Durham Cathedral. On The Avenues, Kingston upon Hull, Larkin is commemorated with a green plaque.

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