Abstract
Philip Larkin’s death at the age of sixty-three not only means a sad day for English poetry but echoes the deaths of poets in a more romantic era — Shelley drowned, Keats dying of consumption. Larkin was not a young poet cut short in the fullness of his creative life — far from it — and yet something of their legend hangs about him. Like Housman he was a Romantic born out of his age; and it is ironic that his poetry was none the less identified, not long since, as wholly in keeping with the drab, diminished, unillusioned spirit of post-war Britain, a poetry of low-keyed vernacular honesty, whose every line seemed to be saying: ‘Come off it’.
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© 1989 Dale Salwak
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Bayley, J. (1989). Philip Larkin’s Inner World. In: Salwak, D. (eds) Philip Larkin: The Man and his Work. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09700-5_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09700-5_16
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-09702-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-09700-5
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