Radical Larkin ― Seven Types of Technical Mastery

The recent deaths of Philip Larkin's friends Kingsley Amis, Monica Jones, Maeve Brennan, Jean Hartley, Judy Egerton and Ruth Bowman underline the stark reality that the future of his reputation is passing irrevocably out of the hands of those who knew him and into the hands of those who do not. The first critical monograph to benefit from the textual rigour of Archie Burnett's landmark edition of The Complete Poems (2012), Radical Larkin is consciously addressed to a twenty-first century audience which reads his works direct, unmediated by biographical acquaintance. The volume consists of seven in-depth analyses of the techniques Larkin used to create 11 of his 'greatest hits'; namely, A Girl in Winter, 'Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album,', 'At Grass', 'March Past', 'Church Going', 'An Arundel Tomb', 'The Whitsun Weddings', 'This Be The Verse', 'The Card-Players', 'Vers de Societe' and 'Aubade'.

John Osborne is Director of American Studies at the University of Hull, UK. He was co-founder and first Secretary of the Philip Larkin Society. The present volume builds upon his Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence, which was nominated one of the Books of the Year for 2010 by The New Statesman.