Philip Larkin

Following the recent publication of Philip Larkin''s Collected Poems, this study draws on a previously unavailable range of work extending from 1938 to 1983. In the course of its survey, the book exposes the limitations of narrowly thematic and formalist criticism, but it treats with equal scepticism the fashionable tendency to regard Larkin as a ''symbolist'' poet. In his appraisal Stephen Regan ...