Critics have tended to label Larkin s poetry as sexist, racist and reactionary. However, this volume demonstrates that Larkin s artistic impulse throughout his career was to challenge orthodox models of social and sexual politics. Focusing on the Brunette Coleman novellas and the unfinished novels, a structural blueprint is identified as prefiguring the later poems commentary on sexual and social conduct. Further unpublished material includes correspondence, workbook drafts, dream records, and a playscript, depicting, alternately, hostility to wartime heroics, revulsion from capitalism,...
Critics have tended to label Larkin s poetry as sexist, racist and reactionary. However, this volume demonstrates that Larkin s artistic impulse throu...
