Acquisitions (124): Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath: Ariel (1966)

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Everett: Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)


Sylvia Plath: Ariel (1965 / 1966)
[Finally Books - Hospice Bookshop, Birkenhead - 19/11/24]:

Sylvia Plath. Ariel. Foreword by Robert Lowell. 1966. Perennial Classics. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1999.

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Sylvia Plath: Ariel (1965)

Lady Lazarus

I don't know if this is still the case, but our first year school-leaver students used to arrive at university familiar with just two poets. One was Shakespeare; the other was Sylvia Plath.

Not that I have a problem with that, mind you. “I see her as a kind of Hammer Films poet”, said Philip Larkin in a letter to his friend Judy Egerton in 1960. He enlarged on the concept in a subsequent letter to Kingsley Amis:

No, of course Ted's no good at all. Not at all. Not a single solitary bit of good. I think his ex-wife, late wife, was extraordinary, though not necessarily likeable. Old Ted isn't even extraordinary.

- Quoted in James Booth, Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love. 2014
(London: Bloombury, 2015): 305-6.

That sounds about right to me, though possibly I'm a bit biassed against Ted Hughes at present, having recently tried (unsuccessfully) to work my way through his Collected Poems for Children (2005).

Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems (1981)

As for Sylvia: not necessarily likeable, but definitely extraordinary. It's interesting to see Larkin contorting this pithy judgement into something more acceptable to the literary establishment in his review of Ted's edition of his "ex-wife, late wife"'s Collected Poems (1981):

Mad poets do not write about madness: they write about religion, sofas, the French Revolution, nature, their cat Jeoffry. Plath did: it was her subject, her donnée ("I do it exceptionally well'); together they played an increasingly reckless game of tag.

[NB: My picks for the "mad poets" hinted at above would be as follows: "sofas": William Cowper; "the French Revolution": William Blake; "nature": John Clare; "their cat Jeoffry": Christopher Smart. As for "religion", that could be any one of them, with the possible exception of Clare.]

Coming back to Sylvia Plath, however, this is how Larkin characterises her last poems, the ones (mostly) collected in Ariel:

Increasingly divorced from identifiable incident, they seem to enter neurosis, or insanity, and exist there in a prolonged high-pitched ecstasy like nothing else in literature. They are impossible to quote meaningfully: they must be read whole.

And their quality?

Considering what one takes to be their subject matter, her poems, particularly the last ones, are curiously, even jauntily impersonal; it is hard to see how she was labelled confessional. As poems they are to the highest degree original and scarcely less effective.

- Philip Larkin, "Horror Poet." Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (London: Faber, 1983): 278-81.

Philip Larkin: Required Writing (1983)

You can see the unease her work caused him. And yet the poet in him could not deny its power and intensity. If the term "brilliant" weren't so hackneyed, one might end up having to use it here, for want of a better.

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Sylvia Plath: Ariel (1966)

The other day I bought a copy of the 1966 American edition of Ariel. I knew that it had a couple of extra poems which weren't in the 1965 UK version, which I'd always used hitherto. There's also a preface by one of my literary heroes, Robert Lowell, so it seemed worth it - if only for completeness' sake. Bibliophiles! - Bibliomaniac would be a better description.

The divergences were rather more extensive than I'd realised, though. As you can see from the lists below, they could really be described as different books:

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Sylvia Plath: Ariel (1965)

Sylvia Plath. Ariel. 1965. London: Faber, 1974. [1965]

1. Morning Song
2. The Couriers
3. Sheep in Fog
4. The Applicant
5. Lady Lazarus
6. Tulips
7. Cut
8. Elm
9. The Night Dances
10. Poppies in October
11. Berck-Plage
12. Ariel
13. Death & Co.
14. Nick and the Candlestick
15. Gulliver
16. Getting There
17. Medusa
18. The Moon and the Yew Tree
19. A Birthday Present
20. Letter in November
21. The Rival
22. Daddy
23. You're
24. Fever 103°
25. The Bee Meeting
26. The Arrival of the Bee Box
27. Stings
28. Wintering
29. The Hanging Man
30. Little Fugue
31. Years
32. The Munich Mannequins
33. Totem
34. Paralytic
35. Balloons
36. Poppies in July
37. Kindness
38. Contusion
39. Edge
40. Words

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Sylvia Plath: Ariel (1966)

Sylvia Plath. Ariel. Foreword by Robert Lowell. 1966. Perennial Classics. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1999. [1966]

1. Morning Song
2. The Couriers
3. Sheep in Fog
4. The Applicant
5. Lady Lazarus
6. Tulips
7. Cut
8. Elm
9. The Night Dances
10. Poppies in October
11. Berck-Plage
12. Ariel
13. Death & Co.
14. Lesbos
15. Nick and the Candlestick
16. Gulliver
17. Getting There
18. Medusa
19. The Moon and the Yew Tree
20. A Birthday Present
21. Mary's Song
22. Letter in November
23. The Rival
24. Daddy
25. You're
26. Fever 103°
27. The Bee Meeting
28. The Arrival of the Bee Box
29. Stings
30. The Swarm
31. Wintering
32. The Hanging Man
33. Little Fugue
34. Years
35. The Munich Mannequins
36. Totem
37. Paralytic
38. Balloons
39. Poppies in July
40. Kindness
41. Contusion
42. Edge
43. Words

Robert Lowell & Lady Caroline Blackwood (c.1970)

Like his friend Larkin's review, Lowell's introduction sounds more puzzled than impressed by the revelation of Plath's late work. The poet she'd become was very difficult to square with the one he'd known - albeit tangentially - in Boston:

She was willowy, long-waisted, sharp-elbowed, nervous, giggly, gracious - a brilliant tense presence embarrassed by restraint. Her humility and willingness to accept what was admired seemed at times to give her an air of maddening docility that hid her unfashionable patience and boldness.

"I sensed her abashment and distinction, and never guessed her later appalling and triumphant fulfillment."

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Sylvia Plath: Ariel: The Restored Edition (2004)

Sylvia Plath. Ariel: The Restored Edition. A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement. 1965. Foreword by Frieda Hughes. London: Faber, 2004. [2004]

1. Morning Song
2. The Couriers
3. The Rabbit Catcher
4. Thalidomide
5. The Applicant
6. Barren Woman
7. Lady Lazarus
8. Tulips
9. A Secret
10. The Jailor
11. Cut
12. Elm
13. The Night Dances
14. The Detective
15. Ariel
16. Death & Co.
17. Magi
18. Lesbos
19. The Other
20. Stopped Dead
21. Poppies in October
22. The Courage of Shutting-Up
23. Nick and the Candlestick
24. Berck-Plage
25. Gulliver
26. Getting There
27. Medusa
28. Purdah
29. The Moon and the Yew Tree
30. A Birthday Present
31. Letter in November
32. Amnesiac
33. The Rival
34. Daddy
35. You're
36. Fever 103°
37. The Bee Meeting
38. The Arrival of the Bee Box
39. Stings
40. Wintering

Some forty years after the first appearance of Ariel, the time had finally come to present Plath's own choice of poems for her final collection. As in Ted Hughes' 1965 version, there are forty poems in all, but it turned out that he'd left out at least a dozen (including "The Rabbit Catcher" and "The Jailor"), as well as adding another fifteen from various other sources.

All of the excised poems are included in the Collected Poems, so it's not as if he was trying to suppress them for good. But it's probably true to say that the 1965 edition of Plath's book is more his vision of what this book of poems should be than it was hers.

But perhaps the easiest way to visualise these complex overlaps is through this further, alphabetical list of the contents of all three versions of Ariel, identified respectively as 1965, 1966, and 2004:

Sylvia Plath: Ariel: Uncorrected Proof Copy (1965)

1. A Birthday Present [1965] [1966] [2004]
2. A Secret [2004]
3. Amnesiac [2004]
4. Ariel [1965] [1966] [2004]
5. Balloons [1965] [1966]
6. Barren Woman [2004]
7. Berck-Plage [1965] [1966] [2004]
8. Contusion [1965] [1966]
9. Cut [1965] [1966] [2004]
10. Daddy [1965] [1966] [2004]
11. Death & Co. [1965] [1966] [2004]
12. Edge [1965] [1966]
13. Elm [1965] [1966] [2004]
14. Fever 103° [1965] [1966] [2004]
15. Getting There [1965] [1966] [2004]
16. Gulliver [1965] [1966] [2004]
17. Kindness [1965] [1966]
18. Lady Lazarus [1965] [1966] [2004]
19. Lesbos [1966] [2004]
20. Letter in November [1965] [1966] [2004]
21. Little Fugue [1965] [1966]
22. Magi [2004]
23. Mary's Song [1966]
24. Medusa [1965] [1966] [2004]
25. Morning Song [1965] [1966] [2004]
26. Nick and the Candlestick [1965] [1966] [2004]
27. Paralytic [1965] [1966]
28. Poppies in July [1965] [1966]
29. Poppies in October [1965] [1966] [2004]
30. Purdah [2004]
31. Sheep in Fog [1965] [1966]
32. Stings [1965] [1966] [2004]
33. Stopped Dead [2004]
34. Thalidomide [2004]
35. The Applicant [1965] [1966] [2004]
36. The Arrival of the Bee Box [1965] [1966] [2004]
37. The Bee Meeting [1965] [1966] [2004]
38. The Courage of Shutting-Up [2004]
39. The Couriers [1965] [1966] [2004]
40. The Detective [2004]
41. The Hanging Man [1965] [1966]
42. The Jailor [2004]
43. The Moon and the Yew Tree [1965] [1966] [2004]
44. The Munich Mannequins [1965] [1966]
45. The Night Dances [1965] [1966] [2004]
46. The Other [2004]
47. The Rabbit Catcher [2004]
48. The Rival [1965] [1966] [2004]
49. The Swarm [1966]
50. Totem [1965] [1966]
51. Tulips [1965] [1966] [2004]
52. Wintering [1965] [1966] [2004]
53. Words [1965] [1966]
54. Years [1965] [1966]
55. You're [1965] [1966] [2004]

So what is one to conclude from all this? What is this book Ariel? To whom does it belong?

I'm afraid that it has to be seen as a strange, posthumous collaboration between Sylvia Plath and her estranged (though not yet entirely ex-) husband Ted Hughes.

Most books of poems have their own peculiar back-stories. Certainly some of Lowell's - Life Studies and Notebook, in particular - went through an even more complicated set of manoeuvres before settling into the form in which we know them.

Robert Lowell: Notebook 1967-68 / Notebook (1969 / 1970)

Nor is it particularly unusual to find divergences between the US and UK texts of what is, ostensibly, the same collection. It seems to matter more for Ariel, I suppose, because of the sexual politics involved: a wife's work still being (in a sense) regarded as legally her husband's "property" after her suicide - despite the fact they were separated and heading for a divorce at the time.

It might have behoved Ted to tread lightly under these circumstances. He did not. And yet, the books he made out of her poems and journals have sold widely around the world, and were instrumental in establishing the "Sylvia Plath" legend.

Now that we can compare them to new editions of her unabridged journals and letters - though not yet, admittedly, a truly comprehensive Complete Poems - we're better able to assess what he may have suppressed or left out. Not a great deal, under the circumstances, one is forced to concede.

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (1963)

I think it's safe to say, then, that Ariel and The Bell Jar will retain their place as the twin foundations of her fame. We have them; we've read them. We may be able to fill out the picture more fully over time, but the essential nature of her greatness is now set in stone.

Sylvia Plath: Ariel (1965 / 2015)

The story's not over yet, though. Books such as these set other minds in motion. The next generation of students may well turn up clutching equally dogeared copies of Tusiata Avia or Tracey Slaughter.

Tusiata Avia: Big Fat Brown Bitch (2023)

Tracey Slaughter: The girls in the red house are singing (2024)

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Poetry Foundation: Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath
(1932-1963)

Poetry:


1. The Colossus and Other Poems (1960)
   • The Colossus: Poems. 1960. London: Faber, 1977.
2. Ariel (1965)
   • Ariel. 1965. London: Faber, 1974.
   • Ariel. Foreword by Robert Lowell. 1966. Perennial Classics. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1999.
   • Ariel: The Restored Edition. A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement. 1965. Foreword by Frieda Hughes. London: Faber, 2004.
3. Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices (1968)
4. Crossing the Water (1971)
5. Winter Trees (1971)
6. Collected Poems (1981)
   • Collected Poems. Ed. Ted Hughes. Faber Paperbacks. London: Faber, 1981.
7. Selected Poems (1985)

Prose:


8. [as 'Victoria Lucas'] The Bell Jar (1963)
   • The Bell Jar. 1963. London: Faber, 1974.
9. Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts (1977)
   • Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Other Prose. Ed. Ted Hughes. 1977. London: Faber, 1979.
10. The Magic Mirror [Smith College senior thesis] (1989)
11. Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom (2019)
    • Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom. Faber Stories. London, Faber, 2019.
12. The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath. Ed. Peter K. Steinberg (2024)

Children's Books:


13. The Bed Book. Illustrated by Quentin Blake (1976)
14. The It-Doesn't-Matter Suit (1996)
15. Mrs. Cherry's Kitchen (2001)
16. Collected Children's Stories (2001)
    • Collected Children’s Stories. 1976 & 1996. Illustrated by David Roberts. Faber Children’s Classics. London: Faber, 2001.

Letters & Journals:


17. Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963 (1975)
    • Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-63. Ed. Aurelia Schober Plath. 1975. A Bantam Book. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977.
18. The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)
    • The Journals of Sylvia Plath. Ed. Frances McCullough, with Ted Hughes. 1982. Anchor Books. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
19. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Ed. Karen V. Kukil (2000)
    • Kukil, Karen V., ed. The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962: Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts at Smith College. 2000. London: Faber, 2001.
20. The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1. Ed. Peter K. Steinberg & Karen V. Kukil (2017)
    • Steinberg, Peter K. & Karen V. Kukil, ed. The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1: 1940-1956. Harper. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
21. The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2. Ed. Peter K. Steinberg & Karen V. Kukil (2018)
    • Steinberg, Peter K. & Karen V. Kukil, ed. The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 2: 1956-1963. Harper. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.

Secondary:


22. Steiner, Nancy Hunter. A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath. Afterword by George Stade. 1973. London: Faber, 1976.
23. Kyle, Barry. Sylvia Plath: A Dramatic Portrait, Conceived and Adapted From Her Writing. 1976. London: Faber, 1982.
24. Stevenson, Anne. Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. With Additional Material by Lucas Myers, Dido Merwin, and Richard Murphy. 1989. New Preface. London: Penguin, 1998.
25. Malcolm, Janet. The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. 1993. Picador. London: Pan Macmillan General Books, 1994.
26. Hughes, Ted. Birthday Letters. 1998. London: Faber, 1999.
27. Wagner, Erica. Ariel’s Gift: A Commentary on Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. 2000. London: Faber, 2001.
28. Bate, Jonathan. Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life. Fourth Estate. Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015.

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• category - American Poetry & Drama: Poetry

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Acquisitions (118): Philip Larkin

James Booth: Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (2014)

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James Booth (1945- )

James Booth: Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (2014)
[Finally Books - Hospice Bookshop, Birkenhead - 31/7/24]:

James Booth. Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love. 2014. Bloomsbury Paperbacks. London: Bloomsbury Publications Plc, 2015.

James Booth: Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (2014)

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Philip Larkin: This Be The Verse

I remember being stuck in an airport bar, idly watching the TV, I'm guessing around 2003 or so, when the huge face of some British pundit called (according to the subtitle) "Christopher Hitchens" appeared on the screen.

The subject under discussion on this particular talk show was the desirability of the invasion of Iraq by US forces - either:

1/ as some kind of imaginary "revenge" for the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Centre, or
2/ to make a preemptive strike on the WMDs ["Weapons of Mass Destruction"] which Saddam Hussein allegedly had squirrelled away somewhere.

"Now we'll hear some fireworks," I thought to myself. "This straight-shooting Brit will put those Yankee imperialists in their place!"

Christopher Hitchens: A-Z Quotes (2003)

I certainly heard some fireworks, but (alas) they were all in the other direction. There's no such thing as a Sunni or a Shiite or a Kurd in Iraq, Hitchens confidently asserted. They're Iraqi first, religious affiliation second. It's nonsense to object to the invasion on these grounds. Saddam Hussain is the common enemy of mankind, and must be wiped from the map.

I could scarcely believe my ears. All the other experts I'd heard going on about the subject had claimed the precise opposite: the tendency of Iraqui Shiites to take direction from Shiite Iran; the overarching desire of the Kurds on both sides of the Iraqui-Turkish border to establish their own Kurdistan; the reluctance of Sunnis to accept the end of the preeminence they'd enjoyed under Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist régime ...

All lies and exaggerations, according to Hitchens. Nothing could be further from the truth. He knew these people; he knew what they wanted - a simple end to tyranny.

"The Hitch" and "Smarty Anus" - Inside Story (2020)

Many years, and many hundreds of thousands of deaths later, the less-than-accurate pronouncements of this somewhat tarnished "public intellectual" were forcibly recalled to me as I attempted to work my way through Martin Amis's final, autobiographical novel, Inside Story.

It's "The Hitch this" and "The Hitch that" until you get thoroughly sick of the man. Martin Amis's book, which gets more and more chaotic and overloaded as it proceeds, consists mainly of recollections of his three principal mentors: Saul Bellow, Hitchens, and - my excuse for mentioning it here - Philip Larkin, the subject of this post.

Mind you, I certainly accept that one should cut Amis some slack, given that he was dying from oesophageal cancer when he wrote it. I can't help blaming his publishers, though, for not working a bit harder to eliminate verb-less sentences and unpunctuated footnotes (not to mention cutting a hundred or so pages of indiscriminate waffle).

Christopher Hitchens: Hitch-22 (2010)

Amis clearly worshipped the Hitch. The final straw (for me, at least) was when he attempted an encomium of "the Hitch's thatch" - a thick pelt of body hair, much admired by his girlfriends, which apparently kept Hitchens from ever feeling the cold, and which remained unaffected even by his cancer treatment. TMI, as they say ... Nor did I feel it was necessary for Amis to revisit so many of the anecdotes Hitchens had already told in propria persona in his own memoir Hitch-22, which I also recently had occasion to read.

Philip Larkin: Poems: Selected by Martin Amis (2011)

It's a shame, really, because elsewhere in the book Martin Amis reveals to a waiting world the far more vital information that there's reason to suppose that he may himself have been the love-child of Philip Larkin, who came over to "comfort" his mother one Christmas when her husband, Kingsley Amis, was off attending to the needs of some other lady ...

Daily Mail: Martin & Kingsley Amis / Philip Larkin (2020)

It must be true, because one of Martin's own ex's heard it from Kingsley himself one day when he was trying to seduce her. He claimed that it wouldn't be "weird," as he wasn't actually Martin's father. What better testimony do you need than that? And the resemblance is quite unmistakable! No wonder Mart insisted on editing his ol' Dad's Selected Poems after hearing about it ...

That sardonic twist in aged roué Anthony Powell's mouth says it all:

Paris Review: Anthony Powell, Philip Larkin, Kingsley & Hilary Amis (2017)

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Andrew Motion: Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (1993)

Anyway, enough of all this facetiousness. The real subject under discussion here is not so much Philip Larkin's work as his life - or rather his lives, the various biographies of this allegedly colourless monad of a man ("Don Juan in Hull", as Clive James once described him) which have already appeared.

Richard Bradford: First Boredom, Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin (2005)

Besides the most recent one, James Booth's Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (2014), pictured at the top of this post, there's the first, authorised biography, Andrew Motion's Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life (1993), but also Richard Bradford's First Boredom, Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin (2005), which he's now followed up with The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin (2012).

Richard Bradford: The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin (2012)

That's quite a large crop of biographies for someone so deliberately self-effacing - even without counting all the various memoirs and collections of letters which have appeared since Larkin's death in 1985.

Maeve Brennan: The Philip Larkin I Knew (2002)

So what is it about him? What makes him so relentlessly biographicable (if that's really a word)? I suppose, in the end, it's mostly the fault of the book below, Larkin's Selected Letters, edited by his friend and fellow-poet Anthony Thwaite, who also edited the first, perhaps rather too compendious version of his Collected Poems (1988).

Anthony Thwaite, ed.: Selected Letters of Philip Larkin: 1940-1985 (1993)

Larkin's readers can be forgiven for having regarded him as the most carefully polished of writers, as well as a reasonably fastidious private individual, just as long as they only had access to the four canonical poetry collections, two novels, and two volumes of selected non-fiction which appeared in his lifetime.

Anthony Thwaite, ed.: Philip Larkin: Collected Poems (1988)

The sprawling, untidy nature of the Collected Poems constituted the first serious dint in this reputation for having chosen perfection of the work over the life (to paraphrase W. B. Yeats). You could attribute that to sloppy editing, though - especially as Thwaite published a tighter, more focussed version of the Collected Poems some fifteen years later, in 2003.

W. B. Yeats: The Choice

Nothing could argue away the shock of the letters, though ... Racism, misogyny, even incipient Nazism, all were blatantly on display in this huge grab-bag of a collection. Had Thwaite grown to hate having to be the literary executor for this profoundly flawed individual? Had he simply got tired of keeping up the façade?

If so, he could be forgiven if the culprit really was so egregiously hateful. Not since Robert Frost's own literary executor Lawrance Thompson's brutal hatchet job of a three-volume "authorized biography" had a much-loved national poet been so thoroughly shown up, posthumously, as this ...

Robert Frost (1974-1963)

After the letters, Andrew Motion's rather more nuanced account of the poet's life came as something of a relief. There were plenty of unsavoury details here, too: Larkin's abiding taste for (softcore) porn; his rather Jonathan Swift-like habit of juggling two girlfriends at a time; his pursuit of pretty girls through the library stacks ...

However, compared to the brute shock of the letters, this could be written off as fairly typical of the homme moyen sensuel of his era. And, considering the company he kept - inveterate lecher Kingsley Amis, and confirmed pornography buff Robert Conquest, who used to supply him with the latest sex magazines - his bachelor lifestyle sounded as if it was more deadly dull than morally reprehensible: most of the time, at least.

A. T. Tolley, ed.: Philip Larkin: Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005)

The question remained, though: How did he get from there to here? How did so grotty a man produce so beloved a body of poems - not to mention such masterpieces as his empathetic, atmospheric second novel, A Girl in Winter?

This is the conundrum that his ex-colleague James Booth has set out to answer. Rejecting the "dirty old man of Hull" caricature of the intelligent, sensitive man he himself knew, he pins virtually every detail of his new life of Larkin to a particular poem or other piece of writing.

James Booth, ed.: Philip Larkin: Trouble at Willow Gables (2002)

While not at all, in itself, a bad idea, one has to admit that at times this approach can lead him astray. The entire chapter he devotes to Larkin's early, girly romances Trouble at Willow Gables and Michaelmas Term at St Bride's', written, along with the poem sequence 'Sugar and Spice', under the pseudonym Brunette Coleman, does seem a little excessive.

Amusing (and basically harmless) though these works may be, they're surely more important as sources of inspiration for Larkin's first novel Jill than in themselves. Perhaps it's because it was Booth who first shared these works with the world in 2002 which makes him so eager to empathise their merits.

Later on, though, when we get to the mature poems, the advantages of lining up these minute expressions of Larkin's feelings about his successive domiciles - Leicester, Belfast, Hull - become more apparent. Talk about a rich inner life! He may have looked miserable on the outside - and, indeed, used that as one of the principal inspirations for his work - but precisely what he had to say about this "ordinary life" of an "ordinary bloke" has continued to strike sparks from successive generations of readers.

It's true that Booth's book is best read with an open copy of either the original 1988 Collected Poems or the 2012 Complete Poems beside you, but that's no real hardship. It's hard to imagine a better way of immersing yourself in his work than that.

Perhaps it's because I've been collecting and reading his books for so long - at least forty years now - that I appreciate this chance to realign, at least tentatively, the work with the man. Without meaning to disparage Larkin's other biographers, Motion and Bradford, I have to say that Booth's the man for me.

As for Martin Amis's claims about his descent from the older writer, he should be so lucky. I don't doubt that every inch of him was sired by Kingsley. When Larkin wrote "don't have any kids yourself" I fear he meant exactly what he said.

Archie Burnett, ed.: Philip Larkin: Complete Poems (2012)

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Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Philip Arthur Larkin
(1922-1985)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Poetry:


1. The North Ship (1945)
   • The North Ship. 1945. London: Faber, 1982.
2. XX Poems (1951)
3. The Less Deceived (1955)
   • The Less Deceived. Hull: The Marvell Press, 1955.
4. The Whitsun Weddings (1964)
   • The Whitsun Weddings. 1964. London: Faber, 1968.
5. High Windows (1974)
   • High Windows. 1974. London: Faber, 1979.
6. Collected Poems. Ed. Anthony Thwaite (1988)
   • Collected Poems. Ed. Anthony Thwaite. London & Boston: Faber / The Marvell Press, 1988.
7. Collected Poems. Ed. Anthony Thwaite ['The North Ship' (1945); 'XX Poems' (1951); 'The Less Deceived' (1955); 'The Whitsun Weddings' (1964); 'High Windows' (1974); 'Appendix: Other Published Poems'] (2003)
   • Collected Poems: New Edition. Ed. Anthony Thwaite. 1988. London: Faber / Melbourne: The Marvell Press, 2003.
8. Early Poems and Juvenilia. Ed. A. T. Tolley (2005)
   • Early Poems and Juvenilia. Ed. A. T. Tolley. London: Faber, 2005.
9. Poems: Selected by Martin Amis (2011)
10. The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett (2012)
    • The Complete Poems. Ed. Archie Burnett. London: Faber, 2012.

Fiction:


11. Jill (1946)
    • Jill. 1945. London: Faber, 1975.
12. A Girl in Winter (1947)
    • A Girl in Winter. 1947. London: Faber, 1982.
13. "Trouble at Willow Gables" and Other Fiction 1943–1953. Ed. James Booth (2002)
    • Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions. Ed. James Booth. London: Faber, 2002.

Non-fiction:


14. All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–1971 (1970 / 1985)
    • All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1971. 1970. London: Faber, 1985.
15. "The Brynmor Jones Library 1929–1979". 'A Lifted Study-Storehouse': The Brynmor Jones Library 1929–1979, updated to 1985. Ed. Maeve Brennan (1987))
16. Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982 (1983)
    • Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982. London: Faber, 1983.
17. Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews 1952–1985 (2001)
    • Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews 1952-1985. Ed. Anthony Thwaite. 2001. London: Faber, 2002.

Edited:


18. The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973)
    • The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. 1973. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
    • The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse. 1973. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

Letters:


19. Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985. Ed. Anthony Thwaite (1992)
    • Selected Letters 1940-1985. Ed. Anthony Thwaite. London & Boston: Faber, 1992.
20. Letters to Monica. Ed. Anthony Thwaite (2010)
21. Letters Home, 1936-1977 (2018)
    • Letters Home, 1936-1977. Ed. James Booth. 2018. London: Faber, 2022.

Secondary:


22. Motion, Andrew. Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life. London & Boston: Faber, 1993.
23. Brennan, Maeve. The Philip Larkin I Knew (2002)
24. Bradford, Richard. First Boredom, Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin (2005)
25. Bradford, Richard. The Odd Couple: The Curious Friendship between Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin (2012)
26. Booth, James. Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love. 2014. Bloomsbury Paperbacks. London: Bloomsbury Publications Plc, 2015.

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• category - English poetry (post-1900): Authors

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