Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than twenty novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. According to his biographer, Zachary Leader, Amis was 'the finest British comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century'. He is the father of the English novelist
Martin AmisMartin Louis Amis is an English novelist, literary critic, professor, and short story writer. He is the son of Sir Kingsley Amis. His works include such novels as Money , London Fields and The Information...
.
Biography
Kingsley Amis was born in
ClaphamClapham is an area of South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth.-History:Clapham dates back to Anglo-Saxon times: the name is thought to derive from the Old English clopp + hām or hamm, meaning Homestead/enclosure near a hill....
, south London, the son of William Robert Amis, a mustard manufacturer's clerk. He was educated at the
City of London SchoolThe City of London School is a boys' independent day school on the banks of the River Thames in the City of London, England. It is the brother school of the City of London School for Girls and of the co-educational City of London Freemen's School...
, and in April 1941 was admitted to St. John's College, Oxford, where he read English. It was there that he met
Philip LarkinPhilip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century; he was also a novelist and a jazz critic...
, with whom he formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, he was called up for Army service in July 1942. After serving in the
Royal Corps of SignalsThe Royal Corps of Signals is one of the combat support arms of the British Army...
in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. Although he worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, he had by then decided to give much of his time to writing. In 1946, he became a member of the
Communist Party of Great BritainThe Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in the United Kingdom, though it never became a mass party like the communist parties of France and Italy...
.
In 1946 he met Hilary Bardwell, and they married in 1948. He became a lecturer in English at the University of Wales Swansea (1949–61). Amis achieved popular success with his first novel
Lucky JimLucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first published novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction...
, which was considered to have 'caught the temper' of Britain in the 1950s and ushered in a new style of fiction. By 1972, in addition to impressive sales in Britain, one and a quarter million paperback copies had been sold in the United States, and it was eventually translated into twenty languages, including Czech, Hebrew, Korean, and Serbo-Croat. The novel won the
Somerset Maugham AwardThe Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to who they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
for fiction and Amis was associated with the writers labelled the
Angry Young Men"Angry young men" is a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leaders included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John Osborne's...
.
Lucky Jim was the first British
campus novelA campus novel, also known as an academic novel, is a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university. The genre in its current form dates back to the early 1950s...
, setting a precedent for later generations of writers such as
Malcolm Bradbury Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was a British author and academic.-Life:Born in 1932 in Sheffield, Bradbury was the son of a railwayman; his family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
,
David LodgeDavid John Lodge CBE, is a British author. Lodge often satirises academia in general and the humanities in particular in his novels...
,
Tom SharpeTom Sharpe is an English satirical author, born in London and educated at Elmhurst School for Boys, Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge...
and
Howard JacobsonHoward Jacobson is a British author and journalist. He is best known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters.-Biography:...
. As a poet, Amis was associated with The Movement.
During 1958-59 he made the first of two visits to the United States, where he was Visiting Fellow in Creative Writing at
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University a private university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and is considered one of the Colonial Colleges....
and a visiting lecturer in other northeastern universities. On returning to Britain, he felt in a rut, and he began looking for another post; after thirteen years at Swansea, Amis became a fellow of Peterhouse at
CambridgeThe University of Cambridge , located in the City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the fourth oldest in Europe...
(1961–63). He regretted the move within a year, finding Cambridge an academic and social disappointment and resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca; he went no further than London.
In 1963, Hilary discovered Kingsley's love affair with novelist
Elizabeth Jane Howard- Introduction :Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE is an English novelist. She was an actress and a model before becoming a novelist. In 1951, she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit. Six further novels followed, before she embarked on her best known work, a four...
. Hilary and Kingsley separated in August; he went to live with Jane. He divorced Hilary in 1965, and then married Jane the same year; Jane and Kingsley divorced in 1983. In his last years, Amis shared a house with his first wife Hilary and her third husband,
Alastair Boyd, 7th Baron KilmarnockAlastair Ivor Gilbert Boyd, 7th Baron Kilmarnock was a British writer, Hispanophile, and Chief of the Clan Boyd.He was educated at Bradfield College and King's College, Cambridge and was commissioned into the Irish Guards in 1946...
. Hilary and Kingsley Amis had three children, among them novelist
Martin AmisMartin Louis Amis is an English novelist, literary critic, professor, and short story writer. He is the son of Sir Kingsley Amis. His works include such novels as Money , London Fields and The Information...
, who wrote the memoir
ExperienceExperience is a book of memoirs by the British author Martin Amis. The book was written primarily in response to the 1995 death of Amis' father, the famed author Kingsley Amis and first published in 2000. The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography....
about the life and decline of his father.
Kingsley Amis was knighted in 1990. In August 1995 he fell, suffering a suspected stroke. After apparently recovering, he worsened, was re-admitted to hospital, and died on 22 October 1995 at
St Pancras HospitalSt Pancras Hospital is a public hospital in the St Pancras/Camden Town area of London. The hospital is controlled by the Camden Primary Care Trust. Presently, the hospital specialises in geriatric and psychiatric medicine....
, London. He was cremated; his ashes are at
Golders Green CrematoriumGolders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. It is owned by the London Cremation Co plc, and opened in 1902, designed by the architect Sir Ernest George....
.
Literary work
Amis is chiefly known as a comedic novelist of mid- to late-20th century British life, but his literary work extended into many genres — poetry, essays and criticism, short stories, food and drink writing, anthologies and a number of novels in genres such as science fiction and mystery. His career initially developed in a pattern which was the inverse of that followed by his close friend
Philip LarkinPhilip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century; he was also a novelist and a jazz critic...
. Before becoming known as a poet, Larkin had published two novels; Amis, on the other hand, originally wished to be a poet, and turned to writing novels only after publishing several volumes of verse. He continued throughout his career to write poetry which is known for its typically straightforward and accessible style, which yet often, e. g. in “Bookshop Idyll” or “Against Romanticism”, masks a nuance of thought, just as it does in his novels.
Amis’s first novel,
Lucky JimLucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first published novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction...
(1954), is perhaps his most famous. Taking its germ from Amis's observation of the common room at the
University of LeicesterThe University of Leicester is a research led university based in Leicester, England, with approximately 20,000 registered students - about 13,000 of them full-time students and 7,000 part-time and/or distance learning...
, where his friend Larkin held a post, the novel satirizes the high-brow academic set of a redbrick university, seen through the eyes of its protagonist, Jim Dixon, as he tries to make his way as a young lecturer of history. The novel was perceived by many as part of the
Angry Young Men"Angry young men" is a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leaders included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John Osborne's...
movement of the 1950s which reacted against the stultifications of conventional British life, though Amis never encouraged this interpretation. Amis’s other novels of the 1950s and early 1960s similarly depict situations from contemporary British life, often drawn from Amis’s own experiences.
That Uncertain Feeling (1955) centres on a young provincial librarian (again perhaps with reference to Larkin, librarian at Hull) and his temptation towards adultery;
I Like It Here (1958) presents Amis’s contemptuous view of “abroad” and followed upon his own travels on the Continent with a young family;
Take a Girl Like YouTake A Girl Like You is a comic novel by Kingsley Amis. Set in the 1950s, it follows the progress of twenty year old Jenny Bunn, as she moves from her family home in the North of England to a London suburb to teach primary school children...
(1960), perhaps Amis’s second best-known novel, steps away from the immediately autobiographical, but remains grounded in the concerns of sex and love in ordinary modern life, tracing the courtship and ultimate seduction of the heroine Jenny Bunn by a young schoolmaster, Patrick Standish.
With
The Anti-Death League (1966), Amis begins to show some of the experimentation — with content, if not with style — which would mark much of his work in the 1960s and 70s. Amis’s departure from the strict realism of his early comedic novels is not so abrupt as might first appear. He had avidly read science fiction since a boy, and had developed that interest into the Christian Gauss Lectures of 1958, while visiting
Princeton UniversityPrinceton University a private university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and is considered one of the Colonial Colleges....
. The lectures were published in that year as
New Maps of Hell: a Survey of Science Fiction, a serious but light-handed treatment of what the genre had to say about man and society. Amis was particularly enthusiastic about the dystopian works of
Frederik PohlFrederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine if, winning the Hugo for if three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and...
and
C. M. KornbluthC.M. Kornbluth may refer to:* Cyril M. Kornbluth , science fiction author* C.M. Kornbluth , V.F.D member in Lemony Snicket's children's books...
, and in
New Maps of Hell coined the term "comic inferno" to describe a type of humorous dystopia, particularly as exemplified in the works of
Robert SheckleyRobert Sheckley was a Hugo and Nebula nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science...
. Amis further displayed his devotion to the genre in editing, with the Sovietologist
Robert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s.-Early career:...
, the science fiction anthology series
Spectrum I–V, which drew heavily upon 1950s numbers of the magazine
Astounding Science Fiction.
Though not explicitly science fiction,
The Anti-Death League takes liberties with reality not found in Amis’s earlier novels, and introduces a speculative bent into his fiction, one which would continue to develop in other of his genre novels, such as
The Green ManWritten in 1969, The Green Man , is a novel by the noted British author Kingsley Amis. A Times Literary Supplement reviewer described The Green Man as “three genres of novel in one”: ghost story, moral fable, and comic novel...
(1969) (mystery/horror) and
The Alteration (1976) (alternate history). Much of this speculation was about the improbable existence of any benevolent deity involved in human affairs. In
The Anti-Death League,
The Green Man,
The Alteration and elsewhere, including poems such as “The Huge Artifice: an interim assessment” and “New Approach Needed,” Amis showed frustration with a God who could lace the world with such cruelty and injustice, and championed the preservation of ordinary human happiness — in family, in friendships, in physical pleasure — against the demands of any cosmological scheme. The matter of Amis’s religious views is perhaps ultimately summed up in his response, reported in his
Memoirs, to the Russian poet
Yevgeny Yevtushenko’sYevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko is a Soviet and Russian poet...
question, in his broken English: “You atheist?” Amis replied, “It’s more that I hate Him.”
During this time, Amis had not turned completely away from the comedic realism of
Lucky Jim and
Take a Girl Like You.
I Want It Now (1968) and
Girl, 20 (1971) both depict the “swinging” atmosphere of London in the late '60s, in which Amis certainly participated, though neither book is strictly autobiographical.
Girl, 20, for instance, is framed in the world of classical (and pop) music, of which Amis was not a part — the book’s relatively impressive command of musical terminology and opinion shows both Amis’s amateur devotion to music and the almost journalistic capacity of his intelligence to take hold of a subject which interested him. That intelligence is similarly on display in, for instance, the presentation of ecclesiastical matters in
The Alteration, when Amis was neither a Roman Catholic nor, for that matter, a devotee of any Church.
Throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s, Amis was regularly producing essays and criticism, principally for journalistic publication. Some of these pieces were collected in 1968’s
What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Essays, in which Amis’s wit and literary and social opinions were on display ranging over books such as
Colin Wilson’sColin Henry Wilson , a prolific British writer, first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism, and other topics.-Biography:...
The Outsider (panned),
Iris Murdoch’sDame Iris Murdoch DBE was an English author and philosopher, best known for her novels about sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net, was selected in 2001 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the 100...
debut novel
Under the Net (praised), or
William Empson’sSir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet.He is sometimes praised as the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt, and widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, fundamental to the New Critics...
Milton’s God (inclined to agree with). Amis’s opinions on books and people tended to appear (and often, be) conservative, and yet, as the title essay of the collection shows, he was not merely reverent of “the classics” and of traditional morals, but was more disposed to exercise his own rather independent judgment in all things.
Amis became associated with
Ian FlemingIan Lancaster Fleming was a British author and journalist. Fleming is best remembered for creating the character of James Bond and chronicling Bond's adventures in twelve novels and nine short stories...
's
James BondJames Bond 007 is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. The character has also been used in the longest running and most financially successful English language film franchise to date, starting in 1962 with Dr...
novels, which he greatly admired, in the late 1960s, when he began composing critical works connected with the fictional spy, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular
The James Bond DossierThe James Bond Dossier , by Kingsley Amis, is a critical analysis of the James Bond novels. Amis dedicated the book to friend and background collaborator, the poet and historian Robert Conquest...
under his own name. That same year, he wrote
The Book of BondThe Book of Bond or, Every Man His Own 007 is a book by Kingsley Amis which was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1965. For this work, Amis used the pseudonym Lt.-Col. William Tanner...
, or, Every Man His Own 007, a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym "Lt Col. William ('Bill') Tanner", Tanner being M's Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels. In 1968 the owners of the James Bond franchise attempted to continue the series by hiring different novelists, all of whom were to publish under the pseudonym "Robert Markham". In the event, Amis's
Colonel SunColonel Sun , by Robert Markham, is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's death in 1964; Glidrose Productions used the collective pseudonym "Robert Markham", for British novelist Kingsley Amis, with the intent of so publishing other novels by different writers...
was the only Bond novel to be published under that name.
With the possible exception of
The Old DevilsThe Old Devils is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1986. The novel won the Booker Prize. It was adapted for television by Andrew Davies for the BBC in 1992, starring John Stride, Bernard Hepton, James Grout and Ray Smith...
, a Booker Prize winner, Amis's literary style and tone changed significantly after 1970; several critics accused him of being old fashioned and misogynistic, while others said his output lacked the humanity, wit and compassion of earlier efforts.
This period also saw Amis the anthologist, a role in which his wide knowledge of all kinds of English poetry was on display.
The New Oxford Book of Light Verse (1978), which he edited, was a revision of the original volume done by
W. H. AudenWystan Hugh Auden who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or...
. Amis took the anthology in a markedly new direction; where Auden had interpreted light verse to include “low” verse of working-class or lower-class origin, regardless of subject matter, Amis defined light verse as essentially light in tone, though not necessarily simple in composition.
The Amis Anthology (1988), a personal selection of his favourite poems, grew out of his work for a London newspaper, in which he selected a poem daily and presented it with a brief introduction.
Personal life and political views
As a young man at Oxford, Amis briefly joined the
Communist PartyThe Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in the United Kingdom, though it never became a mass party like the communist parties of France and Italy...
. He later described this stage of his political life as "the callow Marxist phase that seemed almost compulsory in Oxford". Amis remained nominally on the Left for some time after the war, declaring in the
1950sThe 1950s was the decade that ran from January 1, 1950, to December 31, 1959. During the early 1950s in the United States manufacturing and home construction was on the rise as the American economy was on the upswing. The Korean War and the beginning of the Cold War created a politically...
that he would always vote for the Labour Party. But he eventually moved further right, a development he discussed in the essay "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967); his conservativism and anti-communism can be seen in such later works of his as the dystopian novel
Russian Hide and Seek (1980).
Amis was by his own admission and as revealed by his biographers a serial adulterer for much of his life. Not surprisingly, this was one of the main contributory factors in the breakdown of his first marriage. A famous photograph of a sleeping Amis on a Yugoslav beach shows the slogan (written by wife Hilly) on his back
"1 Fat Englishman - I fuck anything".
In one of his memoirs, Amis wrote: "Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time". He suggests that this is due to a naive tendency on the part of his readers to apply the behaviour of his characters to himself. This was disingenuous; the fact was that he enjoyed drink, and spent a good deal of his time in pubs. Hilary Rubinstein, who commissioned
Lucky Jim, commented: "I doubted whether Jim Dixon would have gone to the pub and drunk ten pints of beer ... I didn't know Kingsley very well, you see." Clive James comments: "All on his own, he had the weekly drinks bill of a whole table at the Garrick Club even before he was elected. After he was, he would get so tight there that he could barely make it to the taxi." Amis was, however, adamant in his belief that inspiration did not come from a bottle: "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work." That this was certainly the case is attested to by Amis's highly disciplined approach to writing. For 'many years', Amis imposed a rigorous daily schedule upon himself in which writing and drinking were strictly segregated. Mornings were devoted to writing with a minimum daily output of 500 words. The drinking would only begin around lunchtime when this output had been achieved. Amis's prodigious output would not have been possible without this kind of self discipline. Nevertheless, according to
Clive JamesClive James AM is an expatriate Australian author, poet, critic, memoirist, talk show host, television presenter, travel writer and cultural commentator.-Biography:...
, Amis reached a turning point when his drinking ceased to be social, and became a way of dulling his remorse and regret at his behaviour toward Hilly. "Amis had turned against himself deliberately ... it seems fair to guess that the troubled grandee came to disapprove of his own conduct." His friend
Christopher HitchensChristopher Eric Hitchens is an English-American author, journalist, and literary critic. He has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets...
said: "The booze got to him in the end, and robbed him of his wit and charm as well as of his health."
Family
Amis' first marriage, of fifteen years, was to Hilary Bardwell, daughter of a shoe millionaire, by whom he had two sons and one daughter; they are:
- Philip Amis, a graphics designer, who is divorced and remarried.
- Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is an English novelist, literary critic, professor, and short story writer. He is the son of Sir Kingsley Amis. His works include such novels as Money , London Fields and The Information...
, a novelist; twice married, first in 1984 (divorced) to Antonia Phillips, a widowed Bostonian philosophy teacher, with two sons Louis and Jacob, and then to Isabel Fonseca with two daughters.
He also has an illegitimate daughter named Delilah.
- Sally Amis, who died in 2000.
Kingsley Amis was married a second time, to the novelist
Elizabeth Jane Howard- Introduction :Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE is an English novelist. She was an actress and a model before becoming a novelist. In 1951, she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit. Six further novels followed, before she embarked on her best known work, a four...
, with whom he had no children.
At the end of his second marriage, he went to live with his ex-wife Hilary and her third husband, in a deal brokered by their two sons Philip and Martin, so that he could be cared for until his death.
Partial bibliography
- 1947
The year 1947 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Diary of Anne Frank is published for the first time.*Jack Kerouac makes the journey which he will later chronicle in his book On the Road....
Bright November
- 1953
The year 1953 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* January 22 - The Crucible, a drama by Arthur Miller, opens on Broadway....
A Frame of Mind
- 1954
The year 1954 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Jack Kerouac reads Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible, which will influence him greatly.*John Updike graduates from Harvard with a thesis on George Herbert....
Poems: Fantasy Portraits.
- 1954 Lucky Jim
Lucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first published novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction...
- 1955
The year 1955 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*First issue of the "Guinness Book of Records" published.*Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is published in Paris...
That Uncertain Feeling
- 1956
The year 1956 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Writing under the pseudonym of Emile Ajar, author Romain Gary becomes the only person ever to win the Prix Goncourt twice.*Iris Murdoch marries John Bayley....
A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956.
- 1957
The year 1957 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Lawrence Durrell publishes the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet. The final of the four volumes will be published in 1960....
Socialism and the Intellectuals. A Fabian Society pamphlet
- 1958
The year 1958 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*August 18 - Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in United States.*First volume of The Civil War by Shelby Foote is published....
I Like it Here
- 1960
The year 1960 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Lawrence Durrell publishes Clea, the final volume of the four-book collection titled The Alexandria Quartet that began in 1957....
Take A Girl Like YouTake A Girl Like You is a comic novel by Kingsley Amis. Set in the 1950s, it follows the progress of twenty year old Jenny Bunn, as she moves from her family home in the North of England to a London suburb to teach primary school children...
- 1960 New Maps of Hell: a Survey of Science Fiction
- 1960 Hemingway in Space (short story), Punch December 1960
- 1962
The year 1962 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Arthur Miller marries photographer Inge Morath.*Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing library books....
My Enemy's Enemy
- 1962 The Evans County
- 1963
The year 1963 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*First United States printing of John Cleland's 1749 novel, Fanny Hill . The book is banned for obscenity, triggering a court case by its publisher.*Leslie Charteris publishes his final collection of stories...
One Fat Englishman
- 1965
The year 1965 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Lloyd Alexander - The Black Cauldron*J. G. Ballard - The Drought*Ray Bradbury - The Vintage Bradbury*John Brunner...
The Egyptologists (with Robert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s.-Early career:...
).
- 1965 The James Bond Dossier
The James Bond Dossier , by Kingsley Amis, is a critical analysis of the James Bond novels. Amis dedicated the book to friend and background collaborator, the poet and historian Robert Conquest...
- 1965 The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007
The Book of Bond or, Every Man His Own 007 is a book by Kingsley Amis which was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1965. For this work, Amis used the pseudonym Lt.-Col. William Tanner...
(pseud. Lt.-Col William ('Bill') TannerBill Tanner is a fictional character in the James Bond film and novel series.-Character summary:Superb in a crisis, and blessed with a dry sense of humour, Tanner is M's Chief of Staff. He is also Bond's staunchest ally in the Service, and they often enjoy a round of golf when off-duty...
)
- 1966
The year 1966 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*February 14 - Dissident writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky are sentenced to hard labour for "anti-Soviet activity"....
The Anti-Death League
- 1968
The year 1968 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Dean R. Koontz's first novel, Star Quest is published....
Colonel Sun: a James Bond AdventureColonel Sun , by Robert Markham, is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's death in 1964; Glidrose Productions used the collective pseudonym "Robert Markham", for British novelist Kingsley Amis, with the intent of so publishing other novels by different writers...
(pseud. Robert MarkhamRobert Markham is a pseudonym created by Glidrose Publications in the mid-1960s. By 1967, Glidrose, the publishers of the James Bond novel series created by Ian Fleming, had exhausted all available material written by Fleming before his death in 1964...
)
- 1968 I Want It Now
- 1968 A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957-1967
- 1969
The year 1969 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The first Booker Prize is awarded.* "Penelope Ashe", author of the bestselling novel Naked Came the Stranger, is found to be several people who each took a turn writing a chapter of what they described as "junk" in...
The Green ManWritten in 1969, The Green Man , is a novel by the noted British author Kingsley Amis. A Times Literary Supplement reviewer described The Green Man as “three genres of novel in one”: ghost story, moral fable, and comic novel...
- 1970
The year 1970 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Deliverance by American poet James Dickey published...
What Became of Jane Austen?, and Other Questions
- 1971
The year 1971 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles wins the UK's first Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.-New books:*Hiroshi Aramata - Teito Monogatari...
Girl, 20
- 1972
The year 1972 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Fiction:*Richard Adams - Watership Down*Jorge Amado - Teresa Batista Cansada da Guerra *Martin Amis - The Rachel Papers...
On Drink
- 1973
The year 1973 in literature involved several significant events and the writing of many notable books.-Events:*Frank Herbert becomes directo-photographer of the television show, The Tillers.*Robert B...
The Riverside Villas Murder
- 1974
The year 1974 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.-New books:*Richard Adams - Shardik*Kingsley Amis - Ending Up...
Ending Up
- 1974 Rudyard Kipling and his World
- 1975 The Crime Of The Century
- 1976
The year 1976 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Saul Bellow won both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.-New books:*Kingsley Amis - The Alteration...
The AlterationThe Alteration is the title of a 1976 alternate history novel by Kingsley Amis, set in a parallel universe in which the Reformation did not take place. It won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1977.-Creative Origins:...
- 1978
The year 1978 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, a humorous award given annually to books with unusual titles is created. The first winner was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude...
Jake's ThingJake's Thing is a satirical novel written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1978 by Hutchinson, and shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year....
- 1978 The New Oxford Book of Light Verse (ed.)
- 1979
The year 1979 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*V.C...
Collected Poems 1944-78
- 1980
The year 1980 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Marguerite Yourcenar becomes the first woman to be elected to the Académie française....
Russian Hide-and-Seek
- 1980 Collected Short Stories
- 1983
The year 1983 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Ironweed by William Kennedy is published.*Salvage for the Saint by Peter Bloxsom and John Kruse is published. This is the final book in a series of novels, novellas and short stories featuring the Leslie Charteris...
Every Day Drinking
- 1984
The year 1984 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is widely read....
How's Your Glass?
- 1984 Stanley and the Women
- 1986
The year 1986 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Michael Grade. Controller of BBC One, axes plans to televise Ian Curteis's The Falklands Play.-New books:*Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils...
The Old DevilsThe Old Devils is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1986. The novel won the Booker Prize. It was adapted for television by Andrew Davies for the BBC in 1992, starring John Stride, Bernard Hepton, James Grout and Ray Smith...
- 1988
The year 1988 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*R. A. Salvatore - The Crystal Shard - first book of the The Icewind Dale Trilogy*Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye*J.G. Ballard - Memories of the Space Age...
Difficulties With Girls
- 1990
The year 1990 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*J. K. Rowling gets the idea for Harry Potter while on a train ride from Manchester to London. She says "I was staring out the window, and the idea for Harry just came. He appeared in my mind's eye, very fully formed...
The Folks That Live on the Hill
- 1990 The Amis Collection
- 1991
The year 1991 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Douglas Coupland publishes the novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularizing the term Generation X as the name of the generation....
Memoirs
- 1991 Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories
- 1991 We Are All Guilty
- 1992
The year 1992 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Ben Aaronovitch - Transit*Julia Álvarez - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents*Paul Auster - Leviathan*Iain Banks - The Crow Road...
The Russian Girl
- 1994
The year 1994 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Kevin J. Anderson - Champions of the Force, Dark Apprentice and Jedi Search*Reed Arvin - The Wind in the Wheat*Greg Bear - Songs of Earth and Power...
You Can't Do Both
- 1995
The year 1995 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea is opened by Jimmy Carter....
The Biographer's Moustache
- 1997
The year 1997 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tom Clancy signs a book deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. , giving him US$50 million for the world-English rights to two new books . A second agreement gives him another US$25 million for a...
The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage
- 2001
The year 2001 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The film version of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic book, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is released to movie theaters...
The Letters of Kingsley AmisThe Letters of Kingsley Amis was assembled and edited by the American literary critic Zachary Leader. It is a collection of over 800 letters sent from that author to many different friends and professional acquaintances from 1941 until shortly before his death in 1995. About one quarter of these...
, Edited by Zachary LeaderZachary Leader is a professor of English Literature at Roehampton University. He was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, and later pursued graduate study both at Trinity College, Cambridge and at Harvard University. Though born in the United States and remaining an American citizen,...
- 2008
The year 2008 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 1 - In the 2008 New Year Honours, Hanif Kureishi , Jenny Uglow , Peter Vansittart and Debjani Chatterjee are all rewarded for "services to literature".*June 15 - Gore Vidal, asked in a New York Times...
Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, Introduction by Christopher HitchensChristopher Eric Hitchens is an English-American author, journalist, and literary critic. He has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets...
Poets in The Amis Anthology: A Personal Choice of English Verse (1988)
Richard AldingtonRichard Aldington born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...
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Kenneth AllottKenneth Allott was an Anglo-Irish poet and academic, and authority on Matthew Arnold.-Life:Born in Glamorgan, where his father, a doctor, was serving as a locum, Allott later experienced the break-up of his parents' marriage, followed by the death of his mother...
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Matthew ArnoldMatthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
- Kenneth Ashley -
W. H. AudenWystan Hugh Auden who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or...
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William BarnesWilliam Barnes was an English writer, poet, minister, and philologist. He wrote over 800 poems, some in Dorset dialect and much other work including a comprehensive English grammar quoting from more than 70 different languages.-Life:He was born at Rushay, Dorset, the son of a farmer...
- Oliver Bayley -
Hilaire BellocJoseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century...
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John BetjemanSir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack". He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
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Laurence BinyonRobert Laurence Binyon was an English poet, dramatist, and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....
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William BlakeWilliam Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the...
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Edmund BlundenEdmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...
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Rupert BrookeRupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War ; however, he never experienced combat at first hand...
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Robert BrowningRobert Browning was an English poet and milly playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
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Robert BurnsRobert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
- Thomas Campbell -
Thomas CampionThomas Campion, was an English composer, poet and physician.-Biography:Campion was born in London and studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge, but left without taking a degree. He later entered Gray's Inn to study law in 1586. However, he left in 1595 without having been called to the bar...
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G. K. ChestertonGilbert Keith Chesterton was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction....
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Hartley ColeridgeHartley Coleridge was an English writer. He was the eldest son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge....
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Robert ConquestGeorge Robert Ackworth Conquest is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s.-Early career:...
- W. J. Cory -
John DavidsonJohn Davidson was a Scottish poet and playwright, best known for his ballads.He was born at Barrhead, East Renfrewshire as the son of a Dissenting minister and entered the chemical department of a sugar refinery in Greenock in his 13th year, returning after one year to school as a pupil...
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Donald DavieDonald Alfred Davie was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes....
- C. Day Lewis -
Walter De la MareWalter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and "The Listeners"....
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Ernest DowsonErnest Christopher Dowson , born in Lee, London, was an English poet, novelist and writer of short stories associated with the Decadent movement.- Biography :...
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Michael DraytonMichael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
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Lawrence DurrellLawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
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Jean ElliotJean Elliot, also known as Jane Elliot was a Scottish poet, and the third daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland....
- George Farewell -
James Elroy FleckerJames Elroy Flecker was an English poet, novelist and playwright. As a poet he was most influenced by the Parnassian poets.-Biography:...
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Thomas FordThomas Ford was an English composer, lutenist, viol player and poet.He was attached to the court of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of James I, who died in 1612...
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Roy FullerRoy Broadbent Fuller was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born in Failsworth, near Oldham, in Lancashire, and brought up in Blackpool. He worked as a lawyer for a building society, serving in the Royal Navy 1941-1946.Poems was his first book of poetry. He began to write fiction...
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Robert GravesGraves considered himself a poet first and foremost. His poems, together with his translations and innovative interpretations of the Greek Myths, his memoir of the First World war, Good-bye to All That, and his historical study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, have never been out of...
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Thomas GrayThomas Gray , was an English poet, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.- Early life and education :...
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Fulke GrevilleFulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke , known before 1621 as Sir Fulke Greville, was an Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman.-Life:...
- Heath -
Reginald HeberReginald Heber was a Church of England bishop, now remembered chiefly as a hymn-writer.-Life:Heber was born at Malpas in Cheshire...
- Felicia Dorothea Hemans - W. E. Henley -
George HerbertGeorge Herbert was a Welsh poet, orator and priest. Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education which led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, George Herbert excelled in...
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Ralph HodgsonRalph Hodgson was an English poet, very popular in his lifetime on the strength of a small number of anthology pieces, such as The Bull. He was one of the more 'pastoral' of the Georgian poets...
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Thomas HoodThomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...
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Teresa HooleyTeresa Hooley , known mostly for a war poem A War Film about World War I, was a pseudonym of Mrs. F. H. Butler. This much information is given in Modern Poetry 1922-1934 by Maurice Wollman; who adds some further biographical information that is hard to check...
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Gerard Manley HopkinsGerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. , was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose 20th-century fame established him posthumously among the leading Victorian poets...
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A. E. HousmanAlfred Edward Housman , usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900...
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Henry Howard, Earl of SurreyHenry Howard, Earl of Surrey KG was an English aristocrat, and one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry.-Life:...
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T. E. HulmeThomas Ernest Hulme was an English writer who, during his informal tenure from 1909 as critic for The New Age, edited by A. R. Orage, had a notable influence upon modernism.-Early life:...
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Leigh HuntJames Henry Leigh Hunt was an English critic, essayist, poet and writer.-Early life:Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, London, Middlesex, where his parents had settled after leaving the USA...
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Elizabeth JenningsElizabeth Jennings was an English poet, noted for her clarity of style and simplicity of literary approach. Her Roman Catholicism coloured much of her work....
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Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and political conservative, and has been...
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John KeatsJohn Keats was an English poet, who became one of the key figures of the Romantic movement. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats was one of the second generation Romantic poets...
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Henry KingHenry King may refer to:* Henry King , , English poet, Bishop of Chichester* Henry King , Member of Parliament for County Sligo* Henry King , U.S...
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Charles KingsleyCharles Kingsley was an English clergyman, university professor, historian, and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and north-east Hampshire.-Life and character:...
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Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, British India, he is best known for his works of fiction The Jungle Book , Kim , many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King ; and his poems, including...
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Philip LarkinPhilip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century; he was also a novelist and a jazz critic...
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Henry Wadsworth LongfellowHenry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American educator and poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline"...
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John LydgateJohn Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.- Early life and education :He was admitted to the Benedictine monastery of Bury St...
- H. F. Lyte -
Louis MacNeiceFrederick Louis MacNeice was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
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Andrew MarvellAndrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a Church of England clergyman . As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert...
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John MasefieldJohn Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
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Alice MeynellAlice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet.She was born in Barnes, London, to Thomas James and Christiana Thompson...
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Harold MonroHarold Edward Monro was a British poet, the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London which helped many famous poets bring their work before the public....
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William MorrisWilliam Morris was an English architect, furniture and textile designer, artist, writer, socialist and Marxist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts...
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Edwin MuirEdwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and noted translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands...
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Henry NewboltSir Henry John Newbolt, CH was an English poet. He is best remembered for Vitaï Lampada, a lyrical piece used for propaganda purposes during the First World War.-Background:...
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Alfred NoyesAlfred Noyes was an English poet, best known for his ballads, The Highwayman and The Barrel Organ.-Early years:...
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Wilfred OwenWilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English and Welsh poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War...
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Thomas Love PeacockThomas Love Peacock was an English satirist and author.Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work...
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George PeeleGeorge Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...
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Alexander PopeAlexander Pope is a famous eighteenth century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson. Pope is famous for his use of the heroic couplet.-...
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Frederic ProkoschFrederic Prokosch was an American writer, known for his novels, poetry, memoirs and criticism. He was also a distinguished translator....
- Walter Ralegh -
John Crowe RansomJohn Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, social and political theorist, man of letters, and academic.-Life:...
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Christina RossettiChristina Georgina Rossetti was a British poet, who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
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Siegfried SassoonSiegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I...
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John SkeltonJohn Skelton, also known as John Shelton , possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet.-Education:...
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Robert SoutheyRobert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
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Edmund SpenserEdmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem celebrating, through fantastical allegory, the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy.-Life:Edmund Spenser was born in London around 1552...
- Sir John Squire -
Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. Stevenson was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Marcel Schwob, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K...
- Sir John Suckling -
Algernon Charles SwinburneAlgernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, controversial in his own day. He invented the roundel form, wrote some novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.- Biography :...
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George SzirtesGeorge Szirtes , born May 9th 1948, is a Hungarian-born British poet, writing in English, as well as a translator from the Hungarian language into English. He has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life.-Life:...
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson -
Dylan ThomasDylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer[, Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved 11 January 2008.] who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
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Edward ThomasPhilip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh poet and journalist. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences...
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R. S. ThomasRonald Stuart Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican clergyman, noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the anglicisation of Wales...
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Francis ThompsonFrancis Thompson was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. A married couple read his poetry and rescued him, publishing his first book, Poems in 1893...
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Anthony ThwaiteAnthony Simon Thwaite, OBE, is an English poet and writer. He is married to the writer Ann Thwaite. He was awarded the OBE in 1992, for services to poetry. He was mainly brought up in Yorkshire and currently lives in Norfolk....
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Chidiock TichborneChidiock Tichborne is remembered as an English conspirator and poet.He was born in Southampton in 1558 to Roman Catholic parents. Given the recent succession of Elizabeth I to the throne after the death of Mary I, he was allowed to practice Catholicism for part of his early life...
- Aurelian Townsend - W. J. Turner -
Oscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest "celebrities" of his day...
- John Wilmot, Lord Rochester -
Roger WoddisRoger Woddis was a writer and humorous poet. One of his most famous poems, Ethics for Everyman, deals with double-morality of ethical principles....
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Charles WolfeCharles Wolfe was an Irish poet.Born at Blackhall, County Kildare, the youngest son of Theobald Wolfe of Blackhall , by his wife Frances, daughter of The Rev. Peter Lombard...
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William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
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William Butler YeatsWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
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Andrew Young----Andrew John Young was a Scottish poet and writer on botanical subjects, and a Presbyterian minister who later became an Anglican clergyman. He was born in Elgin, and educated in Edinburgh, where he went to school, then Edinburgh University and New College for theological training...
Further reading
- Lucky Him: The Life of Kingsley Amis, Richard Bradford, Peter Owen, 2001. ISBN 0 7206 1117 2
- Kingsley Amis: Memoirs, Kingsley Amis, Penguin, 1992.
- The Letters of Kingsley Amis
The Letters of Kingsley Amis was assembled and edited by the American literary critic Zachary Leader. It is a collection of over 800 letters sent from that author to many different friends and professional acquaintances from 1941 until shortly before his death in 1995. About one quarter of these...
, edited by Zachary LeaderZachary Leader is a professor of English Literature at Roehampton University. He was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, and later pursued graduate study both at Trinity College, Cambridge and at Harvard University. Though born in the United States and remaining an American citizen,...
, HarperCollins, 2000. ISBN 0 00 257095 5
- Kingsley Amis, a Biography, Eric Jacobs, Hodder & Stoughton, 1995. ISBN 0 340 59072 6
- The Life of Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader
Zachary Leader is a professor of English Literature at Roehampton University. He was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, and later pursued graduate study both at Trinity College, Cambridge and at Harvard University. Though born in the United States and remaining an American citizen,...
, Jonathan Cape, 2006. ISBN 0224062271
- The Anti-Egotist: Kingsley Amis, Man of Letters, Paul Fussell, Oxford UP, 1994.
- "Kingsley Amis's Troublesome Fun", Michael Dirda. The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators. The Chronicle of Higher Education is the major news service in the United States academic world...
22 June 2007. B9-B11.
- AMIS & SON - Two literary generations by Neil Powell, Pan Macmillan, 2008.
- No, Not Bloomsbury, Malcolm Bradbury
Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was a British author and academic.-Life:Born in 1932 in Sheffield, Bradbury was the son of a railwayman; his family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
, Arena, 1989. ISBN 0 09 9544105
- Success Stories: Literature and the Media in England, 1950 - 1959, Harry Ritchie, Faber & Faber, 1988. ISBN 0 571 14764 X
External links
- "Kingsley without the women", by Clive James, TLS 2 February 2007
- "Kingsley Amis in the Great Tradition and in Our Time," by Robert H. Bell, Williams College. Introduction to Critical Essays on Kingsley Amis, ed. Robert H. Bell, New York: G.K. Hall, 1998.
- Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
- The Paris Review interview, with downloadable PDF
- "The Serious Comedian", by Tom Chatfield, Prospect Magazine, a review of Zachary Leader's biography.
- "The old devil" - article on Amis by Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn is a Canadianwriter, political commentator and cultural critic. He has written five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller...
in The New CriterionThe New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books. It was founded in 1982 by Kramer and Samuel Lipman; the...
- The Amis Inheritance—Profile on Martin and Kingsley Amis by Charles McGrath from New York Times Magazine (22 April 2007).
- Kingsley Amis Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a public research university located in Austin, Texas, United States, and is the flagship institution of The University of Texas System. The main campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol...
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