Philip Larkin : A Writer's Life - Softcover

Andrew Motion

Softcover

ISBN 10: 057117065X ISBN 13: 9780571170654

Publisher: Gardners Books, 1994

Synopsis

Philip Larkin, known to many through his poems, contrived to present a picture of himself to the world which kept many facets of his complicated personality hidden. In this biography Andrew Motion, Larkin's literary executor and close friend, reveals the full man. Granted access to private documents and assisted by the men and women most intimately connected with the poet, this book tells the story of how Larkin, to the cost of his own happiness and that of others, achieved "a writer's life". The author has won the Somerset Maugham Award for poetry and biography.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrew Motion was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009; he is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, and co-founder of the online Poetry Archive. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, and has published four celebrated biographies. His group study The Lamberts won the Somerset Maugham Award and his authorised life of Philip Larkin won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. Andrew Motion's novella The Invention of Dr Cake (2003) was described as 'amazingly clever' by the Irish Times and praised for 'brilliant and almost hallucinatory vividness' by the Sunday Telegraph. His memoir, In the Blood (2006), was described as 'the most moving and exquisitely written account of childhood loss I have ever read' in the Independent on Sunday. His most recent collection of poems is The Customs House (2012). Andrew Motion was knighted for his services to poetry in 2009. In 2014 he received the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gardners Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 057117065X
• ISBN 13: 9780571170654
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592