The Complete Poems - Softcover

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) grew up in Coventry, England. He was the best-loved poet of his generation and the recipient of innumerable honors, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Archie Burnett is co-director of the Editorial Institute and professor of English at Boston University. He has edited the Oxford editions of The Poems of A. E. Housman and The Letters of A. E. Housman.

“[The Complete Poems] is a must-have for anyone who enjoys Larkin . . . Burnett's notes offer a fascinating, compendious vade mecum into Larkin's poetic world. Full of reassuring exactitude about variants, and extensive reference to the poet's own comments on the work, they are most stimulating of all when they cite buried sources . . . A lot of thought as well as an enormous amount of research has clearly gone into this [volume].” ―Fiona Sampson, The Independent

“[Archie] Burnett presents a very different picture of Larkin from the one by which he came to be known; one that is far more literary, and occasionally far more amusing. A reader can now trace Larkin's development from his allusive [early efforts] . . . to his more mature, better-known works.” ―The Economist

“Apart from representing an unprecedented Larkin poetic storehouse, the other glory of The Complete Poems is Burnett's dazzlingly detailed commentary . . . One of the chief pleasures . . . is tracing the emergence of one of English poetry's most distinctive poetic voices . . . A landmark volume, a wonder-book of verse by one of the art form's best practitioners of the last hundred years.” ―Terry Kelly, The London Magazine