User:Almost-instinct/sandboxarchive1

uncited books

 * Booth, James (2005) Philip Larkin: The Poet's Plight, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-4039-1834-1
 * Whalen, Terry (1986) Philip Larkin and English Poetry, University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 0-7748-0232-4

Lead

 * "Issued in 1844, it is her last" - mixing tenses?
 * "The sites that Rambles describes are similar to those of other travel books of the time" - doesn't seem to mesh quite, though can't identify any error
 * "tradition of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Lady Morgan" - there's a tiny ambiguity here (are we talking about 2 ppl or 3?) "tradition of Lady Morgan and Mary Wollstonecraft, her mother" would avoid this
 * "Shelley's aim was to arouse sympathy in England for the Italian revolutionaries, such as Gatteschi" - lose the "the"?
 * In that paragraph mixture of tenses: "challenged", "aim was ", "She rails", "She describes" - just checking that's ok?
 * "Shelley's political commentary on Italy was specifically singled out for praise, particularly since it was written by a woman. However, for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Shelley was known only" - feel the need for an extra word or two somewhere, eg "..was generally known.

Risorgimento

 * "Prior to the nineteenth century, Italy was divided" would prefer something like "From xxx until the 19th..." or "By the start of the 19th....": currently suggest that Italy had never previously been anything other than "duchies and city-states"
 * "Giuseppe Mazzini, a Carbonari who was exiled from Italy" - just checking this plural-looking word is correct for a single person?
 * "These nationalist revolutionaries, ironically with foreign support" - I can see the irony, but actually its pretty typical for other countries to interfere like this (eg French in US), so the word feels a bit naive to me

1840

 * Put the pre-1840 info into the pluperfect tense eg "Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley had lived in Italy from 1818 to 1823" maybe? [I do mean "pluperfect" don't I? I remembering from Latin lessons when I was nine]. Especially as you go into it later in paragraph "Mary Shelley had always wanted"
 * "since none of them spoke German, the group was forced to remain together" makes it sound like they actively wanted to get away from one another, when presumably you mean that they had no opportunity to etc etc?
 * "reminisced about how she and Percy had almost rented a villa with Lord Byron" - where? there?
 * "in Italy] I might live – as once I lived—hoping—loving—aspiring enjoying" inconsistency of dashes?

184–24

 * "She also spent time sitting at Percy Bysshe Shelley’s grave in Rome" something about this bothers me, in the context, but can't work out why. I think I'm wanting to know if it was a series of regular visits, or one long one
 * "He was young—not yet 30—and had participated in a failed Carbonari rebellion against Austria in 1830–31; as a result, he was in exile" would prefer something like "He was young - not yet 30 - and in exile, following his participation in ...." to get rid of slight ambiguity ("He was young....as a result, he was in exile")
 * "Moskal points out that "the strength of [Shelley’s] devotion overturned her previous resolve not to publish again" - can you "point out" an opinion?
 * I know that you're writing in American English but "she wrote Moxon" really jars English eyes. Would "she wrote to Moxon" be possible in American English?

Description of text Part 1

 * "Shelley becomes ill in Germany and again pauses at Baden-Baden to recover her health" - the "again" is confusing me
 * "After recovering her health and her spirits, the group proceeds..." sounds like the group recovered her health

History of the travel narrative

 * "Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Grand Tour became increasingly popular; travel to the Continent for Britain’s elite was not only educational but also nationalistic. All aristocratic gentlemen took similar trips and visited similar sites, often devoted to developing an appreciation of Britain from abroad" I feel that the structure of these two sentences could be rejigged so that the point I think you're making about the "nationalistic" element is made more straightforwardly. Even just replacing the semi-colon with a fullstop and the fullstop with a colon would help my progress


 * "During the Napoleonic Wars, the Continent was closed to British travellers" Entirely closed? Largely closed? So closed as to make any attempt pointless? A qualifier would stop me wondering


 * "and the Grand Tour came under increasing criticism, particularly from radicals such as Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, who scorned its aristocratic connections" I feel a better word that connections might be available - "aristocratic connections" are those I imagine a person, not a thing, having


 * "That is, they claimed to have experienced the true culture of an area and their reactions to it were specifically personal, as opposed to the generic guidebooks, in which the response is specifically impersonal" feels odd to be comparing people ("they" the writers) with books ("generic guidebooks")

Rambles as a travel narrative

 * "Although Shelley even dedicated Rambles to Rogers, her preface acknowledged Lady Morgan" I found this a little chewy


 * "In order to make her politics more palatable to her audience, however, Shelley often uses the analysis of literature and art to make her points" better without the "the"?


 * "Shelley's travel narrative...is a part of the Romantic emphasis on the individual" is there a better way of phrasing this?

Travel narratives by women writers

 * "Mary Shelley violated the mid-nineteenth century taboo on women discussing politics" - is "on" the right word? "against"? "about"?


 * "Wollstonecraft is described as asking "men’s questions" when she is curious about her surroundings and both Lady Morgan’s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s travel narratives received hostile reviews because they discussed political issues. Both Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft" - Two "both"s in quick succession


 * "Also like her mother...Shelley emphasised her role as a mother in the text" seems a bit clumsy.

Italian politics

 * "In writing about the Italian situation, Shelley was also advocating" - you've been using the present tense ("Shelley’s stated aim in Rambles is to raise awareness" "On a general level, she articulates" etc) up to now in this paragraph (mostly!)

National character

 * "It was, in fact, how political events affected the people that Shelley was most interested in describing in Rambles." - I had to read this sentence three times before I got the right end of the stick


 * "she did so again" - again, are you going to be consistent with your use of the present tense?


 * "Shelley's trips to Italy were a way for her to revisit memories of her deceased husband, Percy Shelley, and the children they had buried there. Moskal argues that Shelley needed to "expiate" her survivor guilt.[102] Shelley writes about this process in Rambles" - which process? I'm a little unsure what exactly you're referring back to?


 * "using the trope of a pilgrimage" - this means nothing to me, I'm afraid. I'm, like, totally "huh?"

Librarian quotes
Two of Larkin's colleagues at Hull University felt that his career as a librarian was in itself worthy of note. Douglas Dunn wrote "Librarianship became a profession through the examples set by notable librarians. Philip Larkin was such a librarian" and Brian Dyson called him "a great figure in post-war British librarianship". Having started out by running Wellington Public Library single-handed, Larkins soon developed an assurance beyond the norm. His boss at Belfast University, Graneek, said that he had "come increasingly to rely on Larkin's judgement ... I have delegated to him rather larger areas of responsibility than normally falls to the lot of a sub-librarian ... He has the ability to assess a problem, arrive at a decision and act upon it without delay, which is not too common among academic administrators." When Larkin took up his appointment in Hull the plans for a larger university library—the first to be built since the war—were already far advanced. Larkin made a great effort in just a few months to come to terms with these plans before they were placed before the University Grants Committee; he suggested a number of emendations, some major and structural, all of which were taken on board. The library was completed in 1969; ten years later Larkin took the equally ground-breaking decision to computerise the entire library stock. Richard Goodman has written: "with this step, Hull became the first library in Europe to install a GEAC system". In a general tone Goodman also wrote "it is as an administrator boss, committee man and arbitrator that Larkin revealed one of his strongest suits as a librarian. He treated his staff decently, and he motivated them. He did this with a combination of efficiency, high standards, humour and compassion. Those who have left written accounts of their time at Hull have said he was an excellent librarian and a very caring boss". In his articel in Larkin at Sixty Barry Bloomfield noted that Larkin "pioneered new techniques and introduced methods which have been copied in other academic libraries in the United Kingdom". During his thirty years as Librarian the stock sextrupled, and the budget expanded from £4,500 to £448,500.

quotes
His colleague Brian Dyson goes so far as to call him "a great figure in post-war British librarianship" (Dyson in TMAL, ix).

"Librarianship became a profession through the examples set by notable librarians", fellow poet and colleague Douglas Dunn wrote. "Philip Larkin was such a librarian" (Dunn in TMAL, viii).

It might well be said that the freedom and responsibility given to Larkin so early in his career helped provide him with the extraordinary assurance he showed years later at the University of Hull where his management challenges were truly daunting. Not content, as his predecessor was, to let things remain as they were, the young Larkin began to change them:

Graneek actually placed the advertisement for the job on Larkin's desk. He told Hull that he had:

come increasingly to rely on Larkin's judgement ... / have delegated to him rather larger areas of responsibility than normally falls to the lot of a sub-librarian ... He has the ability to assess a problem, arrive at a decision and act upon it without delay, which is not too common among academic administrators. (Motion, 245)

the most urgent task facing Larkin on arrival in Hull was to familiarise himself with the plans "already at an advanced stage" - for a new library building, one of the first to be built in post-war Britain. Since the plans had to be submitted to the University Grants Committee (the funding body) by December, the matter was pressing. Larkin had no experience of the building of new libraries, nor had anyone else, not even architects, since no university libraries had been built in the United Kingdom since before the war. Since he realized this new library would have a strong influence on nearly every aspect of his work, he felt he had no alternative but to study the plans in depth and grapple with them alone.

What Larkin found was a two-part plan for the building of the library. The first part (Stage I) was to consist of a three-storey administrative building with stacks and reading rooms. Stage II, to be built some years later, was planned as a tall stacks building to be connected to the first. He quickly saw that "when the two stages were complete, readers and books would be separated from each other by the central administrative block" (Motion, 253). He took the rather bold step of recommending to the University that this be altered. They were impressed with his presentation and reasoning

In 1960 he published a detailed report on the new library in the Library Association Record (LAR 42, no. 6, 185-189). It is a meticulous presentation of the plan and workings of a major new university library and shows Larkin's complete familiarity with every function of the new building.

Just a glance at the plans, with the accompanying table identifying the various areas and departments, leaves an indelible impression of the complexity of a library of this size. Larkin's pride and modesty in the accomplishment are to be seen in his account of the history of the construction of the new library (part of an overall history of the library he wrote on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary) and in his report of the Queen Mother's dedication of Stage I in June 1960 (ALS-S, 5-9). In fact, all the documents relating to the library's construction still make worthy reading and could well be assembled to create a casebook

Indeed, it is as an administrator boss, committee man and arbitrator that Larkin revealed one of his strongest suits as a librarian. He treated his staff decently, and he motivated them. He did this with a combination of efficiency, high standards, humour and. compassion. Those who have left written accounts of their time at Hull have said he was an excellent librarian and a very caring boss

Edwin Dawes, Chairman of the Library Committee from 1974 to 1987 observed:

Anyone who might have held the notion that Philip was a fey, otherwordly poet would have had such ideas ruthlessly dispelled on first contact at one of these briefing sessions. His mastery of all aspects of library operation ... was striking, and his sense of political timing for committees astute. (Dawes in PL, 20)

Larkin's influence as a librarian extended beyond the boundaries of Hull. As a member of the Standing Committee of National and University Libraries (SCONUL), he attended its conferences, and served on its committees. One of his most passionate pleas to the British library establishment was to keep contemporary British writers' manuscripts and papers in England.

As early as 1961 he alerted SCONUL to the indifference of British libraries to the loss of manuscripts of contemporary British writers to foreign bidders, usually American libraries. Stimulated by this warning, the Arts Council initiated a National Manuscript Collection of Contemporary Poets (later Writers) ... and from 1972 to 1979 Larkin was its Chairman. (Brennan in ALS-S. 40)

During the seventies and particularly the eighties, Larkin was thrown dramatically into the modem age. He faced what have come to be probably the two most pressing issues in librarianship in recent years: computers and cutbacks. The first he met, after some delay, with surprising ingenuity and innovativeness surprising, perhaps for a man whose poetry hearkens in a Hardy-esque way to an earlier, more traditional England, and who harboured a deep mistrust of computers. But in fact, that is what he did. In 1979, the library decided to purchase a GEAC system - made by a Canadian company which today continues to provide systems for libraries - and to put the library's collection on-line. With this step, Hull became the first library in Europe to install a GEAC system. Thus, having directed between 1955 and 1969 the construction of the new Library at Hull, a decade later Larkin presided over its second major transformation, namely the conversion of the entire stock to machine readable form. Once this decision had been taken, he was anxious that the on-line catalogue should be as accurate and as easy to use as the card version, as well as being more versatile

Once the decision was made to convert, Larkin made several concomitant decisions which proved to be of lasting value. One was "to create a database of fairly full catalogue records, even though brief citations would have been adequate for circulation-related activities" (Wallace in TMAL, 82). (Remember, we are speaking of 640,000 records. This is a librarian working here.) By April 1982, the transfer of the entries was complete, and the system was operating fully. To have done this with a staff "almost entirely without experience of automation" (Brennan in ALS-S, 26) all the while providing much the same services expected of a university library, was no small feat.

In 1985, the year of his thirtieth anniversary at Hull, the Library had altered beyond all recognition from the one he took over in 1955. It was now thoroughly modern and recognised as one of the best University libraries in the United Kingdom. The stock had increased from the 1955 number of 124,000 to 750,000 volumes. The budget had increased from £4,500 to £448,500 (Brennan in ALS-S, 39). Larkin was in large measure responsible for this. He had also, as Bloomfield notes, "pioneered new techniques and introduced methods which have been copied in other academic libraries in the United Kingdom" (Bloomfield in Larkin at 60, 50).

all from here

The operas of Verdi (book)
The operas of Verdi is a book in three volumes by Julian Budden


 * The Operas of Verdi, Volume 1 (3rd edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1983 ISBN 0-19-816261-8
 * The Operas of Verdi, Volume 2 (3rd edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1983 ISBN 0-19-816262-6
 * The Operas of Verdi, Volume 3 (3rd edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1983 ISBN 0-19-816263-4

Mr Larkin's Awkward Day
Mr Larkin's Awkward Day was a comedy radio play by Chris Harrald, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 29 April 2008.

In 1957 Philip Larkin's friend Robert Conquest, of the group known as The Movement, played a practical joke on him. Mr Larkin's Awkward Day tells the true story of the joke, one that had Larkin fearing he might be sent to prison.

In September 1957, a pre-fame Larkin prepares for another ordinary day and picks up his post. But one letter stands out: an official-looking envelope embossed with the words Scotland Yard. The letter reveals that there is an ongoing investigation into him, conducted under the Obscene Publications Act 1921. The letter informs Larkin that he might have to appear in court since it is alleged he has been buying pornography—and he knows all too well that he has. Larkin begins to fret about what to do—should he destroy the evidence under the gaze of a watchful landlady before the police arrive? Eventually, he goes to his librarian job. As he leaves the library he freezes when Inspector Cough introduces himself and says that he is very interested in Larkin's literary tastes. Larkin begins to defend himself until it transpires that the men have crossed wires—one fears he is being quizzed about purchasing dubious magazines, the other thinks he is having a friendly chat about literature. Finally, Larkin prises himself free from the Inspector to dash off to a meeting with his solicitors, who ask him what journals he has been buying. After he returns to his lodgings his landlady knocks on Larkin's door—someone wants him on the 'phone. It's Larkin's historian friend, Bob Conquest, and he is laughing. He asks Larkin about the silly joke he played on him, the embossed envelope and so on. When it becomes clear that Larkin was completely taken in, Conquest offers to pay his solicitors' costs.

Motion: PL: Criticisms of
Motion 1993, p.281: The poet Charles Tomlinson, writing the in journal Essays in Criticism in April, had attacked Larkin's 'tenderly nursed sense of defeat' in an article headed 'The Middlebrow Muse'

Motion 1993, p.328: During the spring of 1962 the then much-respected literary critic A. Alvarez, compiling The New Poetry for Penguin, had attacked Larkin in his Introduction, charging him with 'gentility', neo-Georgian pastoralism, and a failure to deal with the violent extremes of contemporary life.

Motion: PL: The Less Deceived reviews
Motion 1993, p.269: Then, on 22 December, The Times changed everything; it included The Less Deceived in its round-up of the year's outstanding books ... Other reviews quickly followed. The TLS was anonymously cautious but encouraging; the New Statesman was enthusiastic; and Donald Davie, Anne Ridler and Roy Fuller, among others, produced praising pieces later in the spring. For the rest of 1956 and into the following year, articles and appreciations followed at regular intervals. Most of them concentrated ... on the the book's emotional impact and its sophisticated, witty language

Motion: PL: The Whitsun Weddings reception
Motion 1993, p.343: Reviewers were quick to identify if not always to appreciate [its] qualities. A. Alvarez ... writing in the Observer, felt the world Larkin described was too circumscribed and 'commonplace'. To those who felt the poems made the familiar strange (like Betjeman in the Listener, Enright in the New Statesman and Thwaite, anonymously, in the TLS) its acheivement was correspondingly great.

Motion: PL: The North Ship reissue and reviews
Motion 1993, p.358–60: Most critics were content to see it as an interesting stage in the evolution of a poet they admired. John Carey in the New Stateman, Christopher Ricks in the Sunday Times, and Edmund Blunden in the Daily Telegraph were all appreciative. Elizabeth Jennings in the Spectator went one better by welcoming the poems themselves, as well as the information they gave about Larkin's development. 'Few will question' she wrote 'the instrinsic value of The North Ship or the importance of its being reprinted now. It is good to know that Larkin could write so well when still so young.'

Motion: The North Ship
Motion 1993, p.132: Its only contemporary reviewer (in the Coventry Evening Telegraph) ... said 'Mr Larkin has an inner vision that must be sount for with care. His recondite imagery is counched in phrases that make up in a kind of wistful hinted beauty what they lack in lucidy. Mr Larkin's readers must at oresent be confined to a small circle. Perhaps his work will gain wider appeal as his genius becomes more mature?'

Motion 1993, p.191: Three months later he had a rare drop of encouragement. The poet and critic Charles Madge wrote to compliment him on the poems in The North Ship which he had recently read.

Motion: The Less Deceived
Motion 1993, p.275: June 1956, TES: As native as a Whitstable oyster, as sharp an expression of contemporary thought and experience as anything written in out time, as immediate in its appeal as the lyric poetry of an earlier day, it may well be regarded by posterity as a poetic monument that marks the triumph over the formless mystifications of the last twenty years. With Larkin poetry is on its way back to the middlebrow public.

Motion 1993, p.291: T. S. Eliot had seen The Less Deceived and told [Charles] Monteith, 'Yes — [Larkin] often makes words do what he wants.'

Motion 1993, p.328: The Less Deceived was respectfully but quietly reviewed [in America] ... Robert Lowell declared, 'No post-war poetry has so caught the moment, and caught it without straining after its ephemera. It's a hesitant, groping mumble, resolutely experienced, resolutely perfect in its artistic methods.'

Motion: The Whitsun Weddings
[nothing additional to above]

Motion: High Windows
Motion 1993, p.444: Most of the book's reviewers agreed [that it was his best yet]. Whether they were friends (like Amis, writing in the Observer), or aficionados like Alan Brownjohn (who was soon to publish a short study of Larkin's work) in the New Statesman, or unaffiliated but enthusiastic critics like Clive James in Encounter, they were impressed by the book's mixture of impatience and fastidiousness.

Bradford: The North Ship
[Nothing]

Bradford: The Less Deceived
Bradford 2005, p.144 But just before Christmas The Times included it, with generous words of praise, in its books-of-the-year list. This was intriguing, given that no one else had even acknowledged its existence, and this sense of a significant new figure arriveing unannounced prompted and often informed a sudden rush to review the collection following the new year. Anthony Hartley, who had recently invented the Movement, wrote in the Spectator that he saw it as 'in the running for the best [poetry collection] published in this country since the war'; G. S. Fraser, ally of Hartley and editor of one of the founding Movement volumes, contended that Larkin could now be seen 'to exemplify everything that is good in this "new movement" and none of its faults'; and the anon. reviewer in the TLS found him to be now established as 'a poet of quite exceptional importance'. F. W. Bateson in the new academic journal Essays in Criticism contended that The Less Deceived could spearhead a return of serious poetry from the sequestered impenetrability of Modernism to the approval and appreciation of the broader reading public — 'Come buy!' he urged them.

Bradford 2005, p.144 David Wright in Encounter ... denounced the volume as attempting to replace the avant-garde element of Modernism-and-after with the 'palsy of playing safe'. Most famously there was Charles Tomlinson's 1957 Essays in Criticism piece 'The Middlebrow Muse', in which he accused the Movement writers in general and Larkin in particular of 'middle-cum-lowbrowism', 'the suburban mental ratio' and 'parochialism'.

Bradford 2005, p.145 In June [1956] the TES ... celebrated him as contributing to 'the clarity over the formless mystifications of the last twenty years'.

Bradford 2005, p.202 A. Alvarez ... regarded ... Larkin ... as insufferably parochial in outlook and manner

Bradford: The Whitsun Wedding
Bradford 2005, p. 202 Alvarez in the Observer followed up his New Poetry diatribe abd accused Larkin of dwelling upon the ordinariness of England in a way that suited the drab circumspection of his subject, but the doubters were outnumbered by the celebrants, most memorably John Betjeman. He had become, wrote B., 'the John Clare of the building estates'. More significantly he had 'closed the gap between poeyrt and the public which the experiments and obscurity of the last fifty years have done so much to widen' ... Christopher Ricks in his NYRB review ... found a perfect 'refinement of self-conciousness, usually flawless in its execution' and argued that poetry had become reconnected with the lives of its potential readers, 'the world of all of us, the place where, in the end, we find our happiness, or not at all'. The volume had ... established L. as 'the best poet England now has'

Bradford: High Windows
Bradford 2005, p.238 The reviews were generally favourable, with the notable exception of Robert Nye in The Times, but each reflected the difficulty of writing a 500–1000-word piece on a collection which, while short, compelled fascination and confusion. The admiration for the volume was genuine for most reviewers, but one also senses anxiety in their prose, particularly on how to describe the individual genius at work in poems such as 'Annus Mirabilis', 'The Explosion' and 'The Building' and at the same time explain why each is so radically different. Nye overcomes this problem by treating the differences as ineffective masks for a consistently nasty presence.

The North Ship
Motion 1993, p.132: Its only contemporary reviewer (in the Coventry Evening Telegraph) ... said 'Mr Larkin has an inner vision that must be sount for with care. His recondite imagery is counched in phrases that make up in a kind of wistful hinted beauty what they lack in lucidy. Mr Larkin's readers must at oresent be confined to a small circle. Perhaps his work will gain wider appeal as his genius becomes more mature?'

Motion 1993, p.191: Three months later he had a rare drop of encouragement. The poet and critic Charles Madge wrote to compliment him on the poems in The North Ship which he had recently read.

Motion 1993, p.358–60: Most critics were content to see it as an interesting stage in the evolution of a poet they admired. John Carey in the New Stateman, Christopher Ricks in the Sunday Times, and Edmund Blunden in the Daily Telegraph were all appreciative. Elizabeth Jennings in the Spectator went one better by welcoming the poems themselves, as well as the information they gave about Larkin's development. 'Few will question' she wrote 'the instrinsic value of The North Ship or the importance of its being reprinted now. It is good to know that Larkin could write so well when still so young.'

The Less Deceived
Motion 1993, p.269: Then, on 22 December, The Times changed everything; it included The Less Deceived in its round-up of the year's outstanding books ... Other reviews quickly followed. The TLS was anonymously cautious but encouraging; the New Statesman was enthusiastic; and Donald Davie, Anne Ridler and Roy Fuller, among others, produced praising pieces later in the spring. For the rest of 1956 and into the following year, articles and appreciations followed at regular intervals. Most of them concentrated ... on the the book's emotional impact and its sophisticated, witty language

Bradford 2005, p.144 But just before Christmas The Times included it, with generous words of praise, in its books-of-the-year list. This was intriguing, given that no one else had even acknowledged its existence, and this sense of a significant new figure arriveing unannounced prompted and often informed a sudden rush to review the collection following the new year. Anthony Hartley, who had recently invented the Movement, wrote in the Spectator that he saw it as 'in the running for the best [poetry collection] published in this country since the war'; G. S. Fraser, ally of Hartley and editor of one of the founding Movement volumes, contended that Larkin could now be seen 'to exemplify everything that is good in this "new movement" and none of its faults'; and the anon. reviewer in the TLS found him to be now established as 'a poet of quite exceptional importance'. F. W. Bateson in the new academic journal Essays in Criticism contended that The Less Deceived could spearhead a return of serious poetry from the sequestered impenetrability of Modernism to the approval and appreciation of the broader reading public — 'Come buy!' he urged them.

Bradford 2005, p.144 David Wright in Encounter ... denounced the volume as attempting to replace the avant-garde element of Modernism-and-after with the 'palsy of playing safe'. Most famously there was Charles Tomlinson's 1957 Essays in Criticism piece 'The Middlebrow Muse', in which he accused the Movement writers in general and Larkin in particular of 'middle-cum-lowbrowism', 'the suburban mental ratio' and 'parochialism'.

Motion 1993, p.281: The poet Charles Tomlinson, writing the in journal Essays in Criticism in April, had attacked Larkin's 'tenderly nursed sense of defeat' in an article headed 'The Middlebrow Muse'

Bradford 2005, p.145 In June [1956] the TES ... celebrated him as contributing to 'the clarity over the formless mystifications of the last twenty years'.

Motion 1993, p.328: During the spring of 1962 the then much-respected literary critic A. Alvarez, compiling The New Poetry for Penguin, had attacked Larkin in his Introduction, charging him with 'gentility', neo-Georgian pastoralism, and a failure to deal with the violent extremes of contemporary life.

Bradford 2005, p.202 A. Alvarez ... regarded ... Larkin ... as insufferably parochial in outlook and manner

Motion 1993, p.291: T. S. Eliot had seen The Less Deceived and told [Charles] Monteith, 'Yes — [Larkin] often makes words do what he wants.'

The Whitsun Weddings
Motion 1993, p.275: June 1956, TES: As native as a Whitstable oyster, as sharp an expression of contemporary thought and experience as anything written in out time, as immediate in its appeal as the lyric poetry of an earlier day, it may well be regarded by posterity as a poetic monument that marks the triumph over the formless mystifications of the last twenty years. With Larkin poetry is on its way back to the middlebrow public.

Motion 1993, p.328: The Less Deceived was respectfully but quietly reviewed [in America] ... Robert Lowell declared, 'No post-war poetry has so caught the moment, and caught it without straining after its ephemera. It's a hesitant, groping mumble, resolutely experienced, resolutely perfect in its artistic methods.'

Motion 1993, p.343: Reviewers were quick to identify if not always to appreciate [its] qualities. A. Alvarez ... writing in the Observer, felt the world Larkin described was too circumscribed and 'commonplace'. To those who felt the poems made the familiar strange (like Betjeman in the Listener, Enright in the New Statesman and Thwaite, anonymously, in the TLS) its acheivement was correspondingly great.

Bradford 2005, p. 202 Alvarez in the Observer followed up his New Poetry diatribe abd accused Larkin of dwelling upon the ordinariness of England in a way that suited the drab circumspection of his subject, but the doubters were outnumbered by the celebrants, most memorably John Betjeman. He had become, wrote B., 'the John Clare of the building estates'. More significantly he had 'closed the gap between poeyrt and the public which the experiments and obscurity of the last fifty years have done so much to widen' ... Christopher Ricks in his NYRB review ... found a perfect 'refinement of self-conciousness, usually flawless in its execution' and argued that poetry had become reconnected with the lives of its potential readers, 'the world of all of us, the place where, in the end, we find our happiness, or not at all'. The volume had ... established L. as 'the best poet England now has'

High Windows
Motion 1993, p.444: Most of the book's reviewers agreed [that it was his best yet]. Whether they were friends (like Amis, writing in the Observer), or aficionados like Alan Brownjohn (who was soon to publish a short study of Larkin's work) in the New Statesman, or unaffiliated but enthusiastic critics like Clive James in Encounter, they were impressed by the book's mixture of impatience and fastidiousness.

Bradford 2005, p.238 The reviews were generally favourable, with the notable exception of Robert Nye in The Times, but each reflected the difficulty of writing a 500–1000-word piece on a collection which, while short, compelled fascination and confusion. The admiration for the volume was genuine for most reviewers, but one also senses anxiety in their prose, particularly on how to describe the individual genius at work in poems such as 'Annus Mirabilis', 'The Explosion' and 'The Building' and at the same time explain why each is so radically different. Nye overcomes this problem by treating the differences as ineffective masks for a consistently nasty presence.

The North Ship
When first published in 1945, The North Ship received just one review, in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, which concluded “Mr Larkin has an inner vision that must be sought for with care. His recondite imagery is counched in phrases that make up in a kind of wistful hinted beauty what they lack in lucidy. Mr Larkin's readers must at present be confined to a small circle. Perhaps his work will gain wider appeal as his genius becomes more mature?” A few years later, though, the poet and critic Charles Madge came across the book and wrote to Larkin with his compliments. When the collection was reissued in 1966 it was presented as a work of juvenilia, and the reviews were gentle and respectful; the most forthright praise came from Elizabeth Jennings in the Spectator: “Few will question the instrinsic value of The North Ship or the importance of its being reprinted now. It is good to know that Larkin could write so well when still so young.”

The Less Deceived
The Less Deceived was first noticed by The Times, who included it in its list of Books of 1955. In its wake many other reviews followed; “most of them concentrated ... on the the book's emotional impact and its sophisticated, witty language” (Andrew Motion). The Spectator felt the collection was “in the running for the best published in this country since the war”; G. S. Fraser, referring to Larkin's perceived association with The Movement felt that Larkin exemplified “everything that is good in this ‘new movement’ and none of its faults”. The TLS called him “a poet of quite exceptional importance” and in June 1956 the Times Educational Supplement was fulsome: “As native as a Whitstable oyster, as sharp an expression of contemporary thought and experience as anything written in out time, as immediate in its appeal as the lyric poetry of an earlier day, it may well be regarded by posterity as a poetic monument that marks the triumph over the formless mystifications of the last twenty years. With Larkin poetry is on its way back to the middlebrow public.” Reviewing the book in America the poet Robert Lowell wrote, “No post-war poetry has so caught the moment, and caught it without straining after its ephemera. It's a hesitant, groping mumble, resolutely experienced, resolutely perfect in its artistic methods.”

In time, though, there was a reaction: David Wright wrote in Encounter that The Less Deceived suffered from the “palsy of playing safe”; in April 1957 Charles Tomlinson wrote a piece for the journal Essays in Criticism, "The Middlebrow Muse", attacking The Movement's poets for their “middle-cum-lowbrowism”, “suburban mental ratio” and “parochialism” — Larkin had a “tenderly nursed sense of defeat”. In 1962 A. Alvarez, the compilor of an anthology entitled The New Poetry, famously accused Larkin of “‘gentility’, neo-Georgian pastoralism, and a failure to deal with the violent extremes of contemporary life.” (Motion)

The Whitsun Weddings
When The Whitsun Weddings was released Alvarez continued his attacks in a review in the Observer, complaining of the “drab circumspection” of Larkin's “commonplace” subject-matter. However, praise outweighed criticism. John Betjeman felt Larkin had “closed the gap between poetry and the public which the experiments and obscurity of the last fifty years have done so much to widen”. In the New York Review of Books Christopher Ricks wrote of the “refinement of self-conciousness, usually flawless in its execution” and Larkin's summoning up of “the world of all of us, the place where, in the end, we find our happiness, or not at all”. He felt Larkin to be “the best poet England now has.”

High Windows
Of High Windows Richard Bradford writes “the reviews were generally favourable, with the notable exception of Robert Nye in The Times, but each reflected the difficulty of writing a 500–1000-word piece on a collection which, while short, compelled fascination and confusion. The admiration for the volume was genuine for most reviewers, but one also senses anxiety in their prose, particularly on how to describe the individual genius at work in poems such as 'Annus Mirabilis', 'The Explosion' and 'The Building' and at the same time explain why each is so radically different. Nye overcomes this problem by treating the differences as ineffective masks for a consistently nasty presence.”

Larkin at Sixty
To celebrate Larkin's 60th birthday in 1982, Faber and Faber published Larkin at Sixty. The editor was Anthony Thwaite, and contributors included John Betjeman, Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest, Douglas Dunn, Andrew Motion, Alan Bennett, Donald Mitchell, John Gross, Clive James, Alan Brownjohn, Christopher Ricks, Seamus Heaney, Peter Porter and Gavin Ewart.

In February 1982 Larkin turned sixty. This was marked most significantly by a collection of essays Larkin at Sixty edited by Anthony Thwaite and published by Faber and Faber. There were also two television programmes: a South Bank Show presented by Melvyn Bragg — to which Larkin made off-camera contributions — and a half-hour special on the BBC, devised and presented by the Labour Shadow Cabinet Minister Roy Hattersley.

The contributors were:
 * Noel Hughes, Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest and Harry Chambers, on Larkin as they knew him
 * Charles Monteith, on publishing Larkin
 * B. C. Bloomfield (Larkin's bibliographer) and Douglas Dunn, on his work as a librarian
 * Andrew Motion, on poetry and Larkin's poems
 * Alan Bennett, mostly about himself
 * Donald Mitchell and Clive James, on All What Jazz
 * John Gross, on The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse
 * George Hartley, Christopher Ricks and Seamus Heaney, on the poems
 * Alan Brownjohn, on the novels
 * John Betjeman, Peter Porter and Gavin Ewart, who contributed poems of their own dedicated to Larkin

In amongst memoires by friends and colleagues such as Kingsley Amis, Noel Hughes and Charles Monteith and dedicatory poems by John Betjeman, Peter Porter and Gavin Ewart, the various strands of Larkin's output were analysed by critics and fellow poets: Andrew Motion, Christopher Ricks and Seamus Heaney looked at the poems, Alan Brownjohn wrote on the novels and Donald Mitchell and Clive James looked at his jazz criticism

What's it to you, chum?
http://www.harlequin-agency.co.uk/index.php?page=12&action=repertoire&id=50&type=operatic

Britten Balstrode Peter Grimes Donizetti Dulcamara L'Elisir d'Amore Gounod Mephistopheles Faust Mozart Guglielmo Cosi fan tutte Masetto Don Giovanni (recorded) Leporello Don Giovanni (recorded) Don Giovanni Don Giovanni (recorded) Sprecher Die Zauberflöte Figaro Le Nozze di Figaro (recorded) Offenbach Four Male Roles Les Contes d'Hoffmann Puccini Gianni Schicchi Gianni Schicchi Scarpia Tosca Sharpless Madame Butterfly Richard Strauss Spirit Messenger Die Frau ohne Schatten Jochanaan Salome (recorded) Sondheim Sweeney Todd Sweeney Todd Stravinsky Nick Shadow The Rake's Progress (recorded) Creon Oedipus Rex (recorded) Verdi Falstaff Falstaff (recorded) Ford Falstaff

Wagner Donner Das Rheingold Wolfram Tannhäuser Wotan Die Walküre Wotan Das Rheingold Der Fliegende Holländer Holländer

Operatic Repertoire
All the roles that Bryn Terfel has performed operatically

Keenlyside rep - getting into alphabetical order

 * Winston Smith in 1984
 * Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos
 * Ubalde in Armide
 * Figaro and Fiorello in The Barber of Seville
 * Billy Budd and Donald in Billy Budd
 * Marcello and Schaunard in La bohème
 * Catechiste in Briséïs
 * Mercurio in La Calisto
 * Olivier in Capriccio
 * Morales in Carmen


 * Dandini in La Cenerentola
 * Guglielmo in Così fan tutte
 * Abayaldos in Dom Sébastien
 * Posa and Flemish Deputy in Don Carlos
 * Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni
 * Belcore in L'elisir d'amore
 * Onegin in Eugene Onegin
 * Ford in Falstaff
 * Valentin and Wagner in Faust
 * Prisoner in Fidelio
 * Falke in Die Fledermaus
 * Hamlet in Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet
 * Oreste in Iphigénie en Tauride
 * Macbeth in Macbeth
 * Gendarme/Le directeur in Les Mamelles de Tirésias
 * Lescaut in Manon Lescaut
 * Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro
 * Nightwatchman in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
 * Danilo in The Merry Widow
 * Orfeo in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, favola in musica
 * Montano in Verdi's Otello
 * Silvio in Pagliacci
 * Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande
 * Ned Keene in Peter Grimes
 * Prince Yeletski in The Queen of Spades
 * Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia
 * Rigoletto in Rigoletto
 * Arthus in Le Roi Arthus
 * Wolfram in Tannhäuser
 * Prospero in The Tempest
 * Giorgio Germont in Traviata
 * Steersman in Tristan und Isolde
 * Ping in Turandot
 * Andrei in Prokofiev's War and Peace
 * Wozzeck in Wozzeck
 * Papageno in Die Zauberflöte

New section
Neutral point of view says:
 * "The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting verifiable perspectives on a topic as evidenced by reliable sources"
 * "NPOV requires views to be represented without bias...When editorial bias toward one particular point of view can be detected, the article needs to be fixed".

Conflict of interest says:
 * "Closeness to a subject does not mean you're incapable of being neutral, but it may incline you towards some bias. Be guided by the advice of other editors. If editors on a talk page suggest in good faith that you may have a conflict of interest, try to identify and minimize your biases, and consider withdrawing from editing the article".

Referencing for beginners says:
 * "You must use reliable sources, such as published books, mainstream press, and authorised web sites. Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable".

Verifiability says
 * "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications that express views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, are promotional in nature ... Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons".

Douglas Murray (author)
Please may I draw your attention, if you don't already know about it, to this page which gives the rules on biographies of living people? It in turn will direct you to some important Wikipedia policies and guidelines, especially: Neutral point of view says: Referencing for beginners says: No original research says: Your contributions to the Douglas Murray page, if they do not fall within these policies and guidelines, stand little chance of not being deleted. As the WP:BLP page makes clear: On a slightly different note, if you follow the link at the bottom of the Douglas Murray page to the Centre for Social Cohesion you'll see plenty to show that he's still alive and kicking. Yours,
 * Neutral point of view (NPOV)
 * Verifiability
 * No original research
 * "The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting verifiable perspectives on a topic as evidenced by reliable sources"
 * "NPOV requires views to be represented without bias...When editorial bias toward one particular point of view can be detected, the article needs to be fixed".
 * "You must use reliable sources, such as published books, mainstream press, and authorised web sites. Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable".
 * "Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. This means that Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own opinions, experiences, or arguments".
 * "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion"

Swaledale
Swaledale is one of the northernmost dales in the Yorkshire Dales National Park in Northern England. It is the dale—valley—of the River Swale on the east side of the Pennines in North Yorkshire.

Geographical overview
Swaledale starts to the east of Nine Standards Rigg, the prominent ridge with nine ancient tall cairns on the Cumbria–Yorkshire boundary which forms part of the main East–Weat Watershed of Northern England. To the west lies Kirkby Stephen and the Westmoreland Limestone Plateau.

The moors on the eastern flank of the Rigg's moorland become more and more concave as they descend, to become the narrow valley sides of upper Swaledale at the small village of Keld. From there, the valley runs briefly south then turns east at Thwaite to broaden progressively as it passes Muker, Gunnerside and Reeth. The Pennine valley ends at the market town of Richmond, where an important medieval castle still watches the important ford from the top of a cliff. Below Richmond, the valley sides flatten out and the Swale flows across lowland farmland to meet the Ure just east of Boroughbridge at a point known as Swale Nab. The Ure becomes the Ouse, and eventually (on merging with the Trent) the Humber.

From the North, Arkengarthdale and its river the Arkle Beck join Swaledale at Reeth. To the south, Wensleydale, home of the famous Wensleydale cheese, runs parallel with Swaledale. The two dales are separated by a ridge including Great Shunner Fell, and joined by the road over Buttertubs Pass.

Physical character
Swaledale is a typical limestone Yorkshire dale, with its narrow valley-bottom road, green meadows and fellside fields, white sheep and white stone walls on the glacier-formed valley sides, and darker moorland skyline. The upper parts of the dale are particularly striking because of its large old limestone field barns and its profusion of wild flowers. The latter are thanks to the return to the practice of leaving the cutting of grass for hay or silage until wild plants have had a chance to seed. Occasionally visible from the valley bottom road are the slowly-fading fellside scars of the 18th and 19th century lead mining industry. Ruined stone mine buildings remain, taking on the same colours as the landscape into which they are crumbling.

Swaledale is home to many small but beautiful waterfalls, such as Cotter Force, Kidson Force and Catrake Force.

Agriculture and industry
Sheep-farming has always been central to economic life in Swaledale, which has lent its name to a breed of round-horned sheep. Traditional Swaledale products are woollens and Swaledale cheese, which was formerly made from ewe’s milk. These days it is made from cow’s milk. During the 19th century, a major industry in the area was lead mining.

Current human activities
Today, tourism has become important, and Swaledale attracts thousands of visitors a year. It is very popular with walkers, particularly because the Coast to Coast Walk passes along it. Unlike Wensleydale it has no large settlements on the scale of Hawse or Thirsk, nor an obvious tourist hook such as former's connection with James Herriot, and so, like Coverdale, its enjoys a quieter tone, especially as it is more remote compared to, say, Wharfedale, which is much further south and easily accessible from the West Yorkshire metropolis.

In May and June every year, Swaledale hosts the two-week long Swaledale Festival, which combines a celebration of small-scale music and a programme of guided walks.

Quotes from Hitchings' Dr Johnson's Dictionary
"When Boswell came to this part of Johnson's life, more than three decades later, he pronounced that 'the world contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work acheived by one man, while other countries had thought such undertakings fit only for whole academies'."

"Still, the Dictionary was enthusiastically written up in important periodicals such as the London Magazine and—none too surprisingly—the Gentleman's Magazine. In the latter it received an eight-page notice".

"Of the less positive assessments the only properly judicious one came from Adam Smith in the pro-Whig Edinburgh Review ... he wished that Johnson 'had oftener passed his own censure upon those words which are not of approved use, though sometimes to be met with in authors of no mean name'. Furthermore, Johnson's approach was not 'sufficiently grammatical'".

"The Dictionary was considered, from the moment of its inception, to be Johnson's, and from the time of its completion it was Johnson's Dictionary—his book and his property, his monument, his memorial."

"The image of Johnson racing to write Rasselas to pay for his mother's funeral, romantic hyperbole though it is, conveys the precariousness of his existence, almost four years after his work on the Dictionary was done. His financial uncertainties continued. He gave up the house in Gough Square in March 1759, probably for lack of funds ... Yet, just as Johnson was plunging into another trough of despondency, the reputation of the Dictionary at last brought reward ... in July 1762 Johnson was granted a state pension of £300 a year by the twenty-four-year-old monarch, Geroge III ... The pension did not make him rich, but it ensured he would no longer have to grub around for the odd guinea."

new chapter
"In its reduced format the Dictionary became an instrument of cultural imperialsim. Johnson's version of Englishness was widely exported."

"In his sparkling history of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester assers of its eighteenth-century predecessor that 'by the end of the century every educated household had, or had access to, the great book. So firmly established did it swiftly become that any request for "The Dictionary" would bring forth Johnson and none other.' 'One asked for The Dictionary,' writes Winchester, 'much as one might demand The Bible.'"

"The influence of the Dictionary was sweeping. Johnson established both a methodology for how dictionaries should be put together and a paradigm for how entries should be presented. Anyone who sought to create a dictionary, post-Johnson, did so in his shadow."

"From an early stage there were noisy detractors. Perhaps the loudest of them was John Horne Tooke ... Not content to pronounce it 'imperfect and faulty', he complained that it was 'one of the most idle performances ever offered to the public', that its author 'possessed not one single requisite for the undertaking', that its grammatical and historical parts were 'most truly contemptible performances', and that 'nearly one third ... is as much the language of the Hottentots as of the English'."

"Horace Warpole summed up for the unbelievers when he pronounced at the end of the eighteenth century, 'I cannot imagine that Dr Johnson's reputation will be very lasting.' His dictionary was 'a surprising work for one man', but 'the task is too much for one man, and ... a society should alone pretend to publish a standard dictionary.' Warpole's reservations notwithstanding, the admirers out-numbered the detractors, and the reputation of the Dictionary was repeatedly boosted by other philologists, lexicographers, educationalists and word detectives."

"Furthermore, Johnson's influence extended beyond Britain and beyond English. The president of the Florentine Accademia declared that the Dictionary would be 'a perpetual Monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the Republic of Letters'. This was no empty commendation. Johnson's work served as a model for lexicographers abroad. It is no surprise that his friend Giuseppe Baretti chose to make the Dictionary the model for his Italian–English dictionary of 1760, and for this Spanish dictionary nearly two decades later. But there are numerous examples of influence beyond Johnson's own circle. His work was translated into French and German."

"In 1777, when Ferdinando Bottarelli published a pocket dictionary of Italian, French and English (the three languages side by side), his authorities for the French and Italian words were the works of the French and Italian academies: for the English he used Johnson."

"The American adoption of the Dictionary was a momentous event not just in its history, but in the history of lexicography. For Americans in the second half of hte eighteenth century, Johnson was the seminal authority on language, and the subsequent development of American lexicography was coloured by his fame."

"America's two great nineteenth-century lexicographers, Noah Webster and Joseph Worcester, argued fiercely over Johnson's legacy ... In 1789 [Webster] declared that 'Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline.'"

"Where Webster found fault with Johnson, Joseph Worcester saluted him ... In 1846 he completed his Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language. He defended Johnson's work, arguing that 'from the time of its publication, [it] has been, far more than any other, regarded as the standard for the language'."

"James Murray acknowledged that a good number of Johnson's explanations were adopted without change, for 'When his definitions are correct, and his arrangement judicious, it seems to be expedient to follow him.' ... In the end the OED reproduced around 1,700 of Johnson's definitions, marking them simply 'J.'."

"One unblushing admirer of the Dictionary was Jane Austen's father, who assembled a substantial collection of books by Johnson, by his friends and associates, and about both the man and his circle."

"The Dictionary has also played its part in the law, especially in the United States. Legistlators are much occuped with ascertaining 'first meanings', with trying to secure the literal sense of their predecessors' legislation ... Often it is a matter of historicizing language: to understand a law, you need to understand what its terminology meant to its original architects ... as long as the American Constitution remains intact, Johnson's Dictionary will have a role to play in American law."

Initial Reception
From the beginning there was universal appreciation not only the content of the Dictionary but Johnson's acheivement in single-handedly creating it: "When Boswell came to this part of Johnson's life, more than three decades later, he pronounced that 'the world contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work acheived by one man, while other countries had thought such undertakings fit only for whole academies'." "The Dictionary was considered, from the moment of its inception, to be Johnson's, and from the time of its completion it was Johnson's Dictionary—his book and his property, his monument, his memorial."

Immediately after publication "The Dictionary was enthusiastically written up in important periodicals such as the London Magazine and—none too surprisingly—the Gentleman's Magazine. In the latter it received an eight-page notice". The reviews, such as they existed, were generous in tone; "Of the less positive assessments the only properly judicious one came from Adam Smith in the pro-Whig Edinburgh Review ... he wished that Johnson 'had oftener passed his own censure upon those words which are not of approved use, though sometimes to be met with in authors of no mean name'. Furthermore, Johnson's approach was not 'sufficiently grammatical'".

Despite the Dictionary's critical acclaim, Johnson's general financial situation continued in its dismal fashion for some years after 1755: "The image of Johnson racing to write Rasselas to pay for his mother's funeral, romantic hyperbole though it is, conveys the precariousness of his existence, almost four years after his work on the Dictionary was done. His financial uncertainties continued. He gave up the house in Gough Square in March 1759, probably for lack of funds ... Yet, just as Johnson was plunging into another trough of despondency, the reputation of the Dictionary at last brought reward ... in July 1762 Johnson was granted a state pension of £300 a year by the twenty-four-year-old monarch, Geroge III ... The pension did not make him rich, but it ensured he would no longer have to grub around for the odd guinea."

Criticism
As lexicography developed, faults were found with Johnson's work: "From an early stage there were noisy detractors. Perhaps the loudest of them was John Horne Tooke ... Not content to pronounce it 'imperfect and faulty', he complained that it was 'one of the most idle performances ever offered to the public', that its author 'possessed not one single requisite for the undertaking', that its grammatical and historical parts were 'most truly contemptible performances', and that 'nearly one third ... is as much the language of the Hottentots as of the English'." "Horace Warpole summed up for the unbelievers when he pronounced at the end of the eighteenth century, 'I cannot imagine that Dr Johnson's reputation will be very lasting.' His dictionary was 'a surprising work for one man', but 'the task is too much for one man, and ... a society should alone pretend to publish a standard dictionary.' Warpole's reservations notwithstanding, the admirers out-numbered the detractors, and the reputation of the Dictionary was repeatedly boosted by other philologists, lexicographers, educationalists and word detectives."

Influence in Britain
Despite the criticisms "The influence of the Dictionary was sweeping. Johnson established both a methodology for how dictionaries should be put together and a paradigm for how entries should be presented. Anyone who sought to create a dictionary, post-Johnson, did so in his shadow." "In his sparkling history of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester asserts of its eighteenth-century predecessor that 'by the end of the century every educated household had, or had access to, the great book. So firmly established did it swiftly become that any request for "The Dictionary" would bring forth Johnson and none other.' 'One asked for The Dictionary,' writes Winchester, 'much as one might demand The Bible.'" One of the first editors of the OED "James Murray acknowledged that a good number of Johnson's explanations were adopted without change, for 'When his definitions are correct, and his arrangement judicious, it seems to be expedient to follow him.' ... In the end the OED reproduced around 1,700 of Johnson's definitions, marking them simply 'J.'."

Reputation abroad
Johnson's influence was not confined to Britain and English: "The president of the Florentine Accademia declared that the Dictionary would be 'a perpetual Monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the Republic of Letters'. This was no empty commendation. Johnson's work served as a model for lexicographers abroad. It is no surprise that his friend Giuseppe Baretti chose to make the Dictionary the model for his Italian–English dictionary of 1760, and for this Spanish dictionary nearly two decades later. But there are numerous examples of influence beyond Johnson's own circle. His work was translated into French and German." And "In 1777, when Ferdinando Bottarelli published a pocket dictionary of Italian, French and English (the three languages side by side), his authorities for the French and Italian words were the works of the French and Italian academies: for the English he used Johnson."

Influence in America
The Dictionary was exported to America. "The American adoption of the Dictionary was a momentous event not just in its history, but in the history of lexicography. For Americans in the second half of hte eighteenth century, Johnson was the seminal authority on language, and the subsequent development of American lexicography was coloured by his fame." . For American lexicographers the Dictionary was impossible to ignore: "America's two great nineteenth-century lexicographers, Noah Webster and Joseph Worcester, argued fiercely over Johnson's legacy ... In 1789 [Webster] declared that 'Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline.'" "Where Webster found fault with Johnson, Joseph Worcester saluted him ... In 1846 he completed his Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language. He defended Johnson's work, arguing that 'from the time of its publication, [it] has been, far more than any other, regarded as the standard for the language'." Notwithstanding the evolution of American lexicography "The Dictionary has also played its part in the law, especially in the United States. Legistlators are much occuped with ascertaining 'first meanings', with trying to secure the literal sense of their predecessors' legislation ... Often it is a matter of historicizing language: to understand a law, you need to understand what its terminology meant to its original architects ... as long as the American Constitution remains intact, Johnson's Dictionary will have a role to play in American law."

Dr Johnson's Dictionary
Henry Hitchings's lively and entertaining biography of the book charts the struggle and ultimate triumph of one of the first attempts to 'fix' the language, which despite its imperfections proved to be one of the English language's most significant cultural monuments.

Popular accounts of Johnson turn him into a lovable eccentric, which is a way of avoiding his brainpower. Hitchings will have none of this. He keeps drawing attention to the unremitting intelligence that Johnson's lexicographical labours demanded, not least in separating out the ramifying senses of common words

Hitchings's task is to rescue Johnson from Boswell's attentions, much as Adam Sisman rescued the biographer from his own self-mythologising in Boswell's Presumptuous Task (2000), a logical companion piece to this work. The Johnson of the Dictionary was never known to Boswell, and as the older man was ill-disposed to animadvert on his younger self, Boswell got such basics as the great man's working methods on the Dictionary glaringly wrong. Not so Hitchings.

Into prose
The first popular account of Dr Johnson's magnum opus, it "charts the struggle and ultimate triumph of one of the first attempts to 'fix' the language, which despite its imperfections proved to be one of the English language's most significant cultural monuments". Avoiding the more usual portrayal of Dr Johnson as "a lovable eccentric" Hitchings "keeps drawing attention to the unremitting intelligence that Johnson's lexicographical labours demanded, not least in separating out the ramifying senses of common words". Whilst declaring that "Hitchings's task is to rescue Johnson from Boswell's attentions" Will Self pointed out "The Johnson of the Dictionary was never known to Boswell, and as the older man was ill-disposed to animadvert on his younger self, Boswell got such basics as the great man's working methods on the Dictionary glaringly wrong. Not so Hitchings".

The Secret Life of Words
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/10/05/the_hidden_joyful_world_of_words/ The book follows the "pedigree and career" of the English language through history, exposing its debt to invasions, to threats from abroad, and to an island people's dealings with the world beyond its shores. In doing this, Hitchings lays bare the general spirit of acquisitiveness that informs English as no other language. But, for all that, his true object is to reveal past frames of mind and to show how our present outlook is informed by the history squirreled away in the words we use

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/12/bohit112.xml

Rather than using history to explain language, Hitchings's sounder approach is to pick words apart to get at their origins ... Quite how Hitchings has managed to wrestle this dizzying mountain of dense information into such an elegant narrative in the mere two years since his study of Dr Johnson's dictionary is a feat almost as admirable as that of the great lexicographer

Whatever is hybrid, fluid and unpoliced about English delights him.

Into prose
Following the English language's history through "its debt to invasions, to threats from abroad, and to an island people's dealings with the world beyond its shores" the book examines its unbroken acquisitiveness—"but for all that [Hitchings'] true object is to reveal past frames of mind and to show how our present outlook is informed by the history squirreled away in the words we use". Instead of using history to explain language, Hitchings "picks words apart to find their origins" and then molds this "mountain of dense information into an elegant narrative". The Economist noted that "whatever is hybrid, fluid and unpoliced about English delights him".

new cite template
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Books with no author but one editor:

Citation template for Larkin


Books with no author but one editor:



Biographies and memoirs

 * Bradford, Richard (2005) First Boredom Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin, Peter Owen Publishers. ISBN 0-7206-1147-4
 * Brennan, Maeve (2002) The Philip Larkin I Knew, Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6275-6
 * Hartley, Jean (1989) Philip Larkin, the Marvell Press and Me, Carcanet Press. ISBN 0-856358-38-X
 * Motion, Andrew (1993) Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-17065-X





Haydn
In this opera Haydn combined the worlds of opera seria and buffa, achieving a balance between the heroic and the comic and allowing him to explore a wide variety of musical styles from serious emotions to hilarious parody.

The overture was used by Haydn as the finale of his Symphony No 73 'La Chasse'.

Both the noble characters Celia and Fileno have deeply felt cavatine early in the opera. The fright, cowardice and deranged state of Perrucchetto (literally 'wig-maker') are displayed in his breathless G minor aria, which ends with a request for a bottle of Bordeaux wine. Celia's aria "Deh soccorri un infelice" includes a difficult muted horn solo (often assigned to the bassoon).

The complex finale to Act I is based around keys related by thirds (four moves down a third, then a half tone step) to represent the downwards progression of the plot; this sequence is imitated in the opening numbers (after the overture) of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. Haydn's key relationships in the Act II finale are developed even further by Mozart in Act II of his opera.

In Act II, the Count has a comic song "Di questo audace ferro" addressed to the not-quite-inert boar, while Melibeo's "Mi dica, il mio signore" is delightfully comic. Celia contemplates her own death in a musically adventurous scene "Ah come il core" (published separately as a solo cantata in 1782). While Amaranta's interaction with the others is usually comic, she is given a tender and tragic aria "Del amor mio fedele". In the Act II finale, Haydn's parody of Gluck's chorus of furies from Orfeo ed Euridice was probably intended to amuse his musical patron.

The dramatic action of La fedeltà premiata moves forward with great energy, successfully solving the problems of dramatic pacing that detract from some of his other operas.

The work is scored for an orchestra consisting of flute, 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 trumpets, 2 horns, timpani, violins I & II, viola, cello, bass and continuo.

reworked
In this opera Haydn combined the worlds of opera seria and buffa, achieving a balance between the heroic and the comic and allowing him to explore a wide variety of musical styles from serious emotions to hilarious parody.

On the one hand, both the nobly-born characters Celia and Fileno have deeply felt cavatine early in the opera and later Celia contemplates her own death in a musically adventurous scene "Ah come il core".

On the other hand, Melibeo's "Mi dica, il mio signore" is comic and in Act II, the Count has a comic song "Di questo audace ferro" addressed to the not-quite-inert boar. The fright, cowardice and deranged state of Perrucchetto - whose name literally means "wig-maker" - are displayed in his breathless G minor aria, which ends with a request for a bottle of Bordeaux wine.

While Amaranta's interaction with the others is usually comic, she is given a tender and tragic aria "Del amor mio fedele". This blurring of heroic and comic is also seen in the Act II finale, where Haydn parodies Gluck's chorus of furies from Orfeo ed Euridice. The complex finale to Act I is based around keys related by thirds (four moves down a third, then a half tone step) - possibly to represent the downwards progression of the plot - Robbins Landon has observed that this sequence is imitated in the opening numbers of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. Haydn's key relationships in the Act II finale are developed further in Cosi.

J.A. Rice has written that the dramatic action of La fedeltà premiata moves forward with great energy, successfully solving the problems of dramatic pacing that detract from some of his other operas.

The overture was used by Haydn as the finale of his Symphony No 73 'La Chasse'.

Celia's scene "Ah come il core" was published separately as a solo cantata in 1782.

The work is scored for an orchestra consisting of flute, 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 trumpets, 2 horns, timpani, violins I & II, viola, cello, bass and continuo. Celia's aria "Deh soccorri un infelice" includes a difficult hand horn solo.

Refs for AMM
   "lyrical" "monstruous" [a]

text
Anthony Michaels-Moore (born x xxxx xxxx in xxxxxxx, xxxx) is an English baritone opera singer.

Michaels-Moore studied at Newcastle University and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and in 1985 was the first British winner of the Luciano Pavarotti Competition. His career has been centred around the Italian repetoire, starting with lyric roles, but now focused on the great Verdi baritone roles. A review of his 2009 performances of Rigoletto with English National Opera noted his ability to be both "gloriously lyrical and terrifyingly baleful at the same time", combining beautiful Italianate legato with "monstrous power".

Michaels-Moore made his début at London's Royal Opera House in 1987 and has subsequently appeared in many productions there including L’Elisir d’amore, La Bohème, I Pagliacci, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Tosca, Macbeth, The Marriage of Figaro, Andrea Chénier, Il Trovatore, Falstaff, Tosca, Lucia di Lammermoor and La Traviata. He has also appeared with all the other major British companies: English and Welsh National Operas, Opera North, Scottish Opera and Glyndebourne.

In Europe he has appeared at major houses such as the Vienna State Opera, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Opéra National de Paris, Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper and Staatsoper in Berlin, Barcelona’s Liceu, Brussels la Monnaie, the Grand Théâtre de Geneve and Madrid’s Teatro Real. He also appears regularly in North America, and has performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the San Francisco Opera, Chicago’s Lyric Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Colorado and Florida Grand Opera. He has also appeared at the historic Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.

Gary Lehman
Gary Lehman is an american operatic tenor, specialising in the Heldentenor repertoire

He initially trained as a baritone at Youngstown State University, continued his studies at Indiana University, and as a member of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists gave 90 performances with the Lyric Opera of Chicago He made his debut as a tenor in 2006 as Samson in Samson et Dalila.

Lehman's first Wagner performances were in the title role in Tannhauser in March 2007. A year later he made his Met debut in Tristan. He repeated the role with the Mariinsky Opera in June 2008, with Leipzig Opera in January 09 and gave concert performances with the Philharmonia Orchestrea throughout Europe in Aug and September of 2010. Further Wagner roles have been Siegmund in Die Walkure, at the Met, and the title role in Parsifal, which he has recorded.

After Ben Heppner dropped out of ongoing Metropolitan Opera Ring Cycle it was announced in February 2011 that Lehman will sing Siegfried in both Siegfried in October 2011 and Gotterdammerung in January 2012.

His repertoire also includes Canio in Pagliacci, the title role in Peter Grimes, Florestan in Fidelio, and Alwa in Lulu.

Reformat refs
He initially trained as a baritone at Youngstown State University, continued his studies at Indiana University, and as a member of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists gave 90 performances with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He made his debut as a tenor in 2006 as Samson in Samson et Dalila.

Lehman's first Wagner performances were in the title role in Tannhauser in March 2007. A year later he made his both his Metropolitan Opera and role debuts in Tristan und Isolde. He repeated the role with the Mariinsky Opera in June 2008, with Leipzig Opera in January 2009 and gave concert performances with the Philharmonia Orchestra throughout Europe in August and September of 2010. Further Wagner roles have been Siegmund in Die Walküre, also at the Met, and the title role in Parsifal, which he has recorded.

After Ben Heppner dropped out of the ongoing Metropolitan Opera Ring Cycle it was announced in February 2011 that Lehman will sing Siegfried in both Siegfried in October 2011 and Götterdämmerung in January 2012.

His repertoire also includes Canio in Pagliacci, the title role in Peter Grimes, Florestan in Fidelio, and Alwa in Lulu.

Neil Howlett
Neil Howlett is an English baritone opera singer.

Howlett studied at Cambridge University. While there he won the 1957 Kathleen Ferrier Award. The peak of his career was the seventeen years he spent as principal baritone with English National Opera. His wide range of repertoire included the heaviest Verdi roles, especially Iago in Otello, and many Heldenbaritone roles, such as Amfortas and Scarpia. Late in his career he also sang Wotan.

His recordings include Verdi's Otello with ENO in 1983, alongside Charles Craig and Rosalind Plowright, for Chandos Records.

After retiring from full-time performance Howlett was Head of Vocal Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Artur Ruciński
Artur Ruciński (born in Warsaw in 1976) is a Polish baritone opera singer.

Ruciński studied at the Warsaw Academy of Music and made his debut as Papageno in The Magic Flute with Warsaw Chamber Opera in 2001.IMG Artists website

In 2002 he made his debut at Warsaw's National Theatre, taking the title role in Yevgeny Onegin. He has gone on to sing Onegin with the Berlin State Opera.

Other roles have included Figaro in The Barber of Seville, Prince Yeletsky in The Queen of Spades, Marcello in La bohème, Riccardo in I puritani and Valentin in Faust.

Anna Christy
Anna Christy is an America soprano opera singer.

Christy sings a variety of lyric roles, such as Susanna, Papagena and Cleopatra, but has won especial reknown in coloratura roles such as Cunegonde in Candide (musical) and Oscar in Un ballo in maschera. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the 2004/5 season, and has sung with Santa Fe Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, L'Opera National de Paris and the Royal Opera House, London.

In February 2010 she reprised her interpretation of the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor for English National Opera.

Sarah Tynan
Sarah Tynan is a British soprano opera singer.

Studio Recordings
Robert Merrill made at least 23 studio recordings of complete operas:

Performances with the Metropolitan Opera
Robert Merrill made 769 performances with the Metropolitan Opera in the following 21 roles:

Verdi

 * Rigoletto
 * Nabucco
 * Attila
 * Simon Boccanegra
 * Germont in La Traviata
 * Rodrigo in Don Carlos
 * Iago in Otello
 * Ford in Falstaff
 * Count di Luna in Il trovatore
 * Stankar in Stiffelio
 * Vasconcello in I Vespri Siciliani
 * Don Carlo in La Forza del Destino
 * Francesco Foscari in I due Foscari

Puccini

 * Scarpia in Tosca
 * Jack Rance in La fanciulla del West
 * Marcello in La Bohème
 * Sharpless in Madama Butterfly
 * Lescaut in Manon Lescaut

Donizetti

 * Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor
 * Belcore in L'elisir d'amore
 * Antonio in Linda di Chamounix

Other Italian repertoire

 * Figaro in The Barber of Seville by Rossini
 * Chief Priest in La Vestale by Spontini
 * Gérard in Andrea Chenier by Giordano
 * Alfio in Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni
 * Silvio in Pagliacci by Leoncavallo
 * De Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac by Alfano

Repertoire in other languages

 * Yevgeny Onegin by Tchaikovsky
 * Hamlet by Thomas
 * Oreste in Iphigénie en Tauride by Gluck
 * Lescaut in Manon by Massenet
 * Zurga in The Pearl Fishers by Bizet
 * The Count in The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart
 * Balstode in Peter Grimes by Britten

Complete operas

 * Orazio in Orazi e Curiazi by Mercadante with the David Parry and the Philharmonia Orchestra (Opera Rara)
 * Balstrode in Peter Grimes by Britten with Sir Colin Davis and LSO (LSO Live)
 * Yeoman of the Guard with Sir Neville Marriner (Philips Classics)
 * Alphonse in La Favorita by Donizetti with Marcello Viotti (BMG Classics)
 * Enrio in Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti with Sir Charles Mackerras (Sony)
 * Ford in Falstaff by Verdi with John Eliot Gardiner (Decca)
 * Egberto in Aroldo by Verdi with Fabio Luisi (Philips Classics)
 * Renato in A Masked Ball by Verdi with David Parry (Chandos)
 * La vestale by Spontini with Riccardo Muti (Sony)

Other recordings

 * Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater with Claus Peter Flor (BMG Classics)
 * Orff's Carmina Burana with André Previn (Deutsche Grammophon)
 * Purcell's The Fairy Queen with Harnoncourt (Teldec Classics)
 * Puccini arias with the Royal Opera House Orchestra (Conifer)
 * Mendelssohn’s Erste Walpurgisnacht with the Philharmonia Orchestra

1.1 1922–50
[Currently none]

1.2 1950–69
[Currently none]

1.3 1969–85

 * BB says: "It seems that too little use is made in the article of the collected letters, which could be used to flesh out more details of his private life, including some quite significant incidents. Among things not mentioned in the article are his being made a Companion of Honour in summer 1985 (letter to Anthony Powell 7 August 1985) and his being too ill to receive it from the Queen (letter 18 October 1985 to Colin Gunner). Also, we learn that Larkin was made a Companion of Literature (C.Litt) by the RSL, a more singular honour than a Fellowship (letter to Robert Conquest, 4 July 1978), and we can read what he thought about this ("Down among the dead men")" Does anyone have with access to this book? If so, could they dredge up the information being pointed to by BB?


 * BB comments: "The section title "1969-85: "Beyond the light stand failure and remorse" is, I believe, too literary and cryptic for an encyclopedia. It suggests the editor's voice in summarising Larkin's career. I'd go for something less personal."

2.1 Juvenilia &c.

 * BB says: "Booth's collection of the Coleman fiction and other early writing has a lengthy introduction discussing these works. It would be good to see this used as a source. In particular there is discussion of two unfinished novels No For An Answer and A New World Symphony, dated as between 1948 and 1954. These are not mentioned in the article, and I believe they should be, particularly as Booth's book has long (80+ pages) extracts from both." I don't have this book. Does anyone else?


 * "In what way did [The North Ship] show the influence of Yeats?"

2.2 Mature works

 * "I feel like the analysis of Larkin's writing is a bit thin. The "Creative output" section doesn't contain any analysis of his novels, for example."

2.3 Poetic style

 * M3 says: "I'm not getting a sense in the Creative output section of how Larkin's poetry style or themes resounded with his generation, whether he was revolutionary or not, whether he was as plain as any poet who gets into a magazine" and "I am also wishing for a statement or paragraph in this section ... that roundly states what his poems were about, what essence they captured, and how critics have since described his career"


 * "Larkin's earliest work showed the influence of Eliot, Auden and Yeats, and the development of his mature poetic identity in the early 1950s coincided with the growing influence on him of Thomas Hardy. - In what specific ways did these other poets influence Larkin's work?"


 * "The "Poetic style" section is almost entirley made up of quotations. Could some of these be removed and paraphrases used instead? It is jarring for the reader to read so many quotes."

2.4 Prose non-fiction

 * BB says: "we should be told whose view it is that in Required Writing his scepticism is at its most "nuanced and illuminating" (and preferably what this means), and at its most inflamed and polemical in the Daily Telegraph reviews. The sentence beginning "His scepticism...." is much too long and needs dividing" This, IIRC was written a long time ago. It would be good if someone could rewrite the whole section, IMO

3.1 Reception

 * Paraphrase long Bradford quote on High Windows


 * More wanted on Larkin at Sixty

3.2 Critical opinion

 * BB says: ""Cooper draws on the entire canon of Larkin's works, as well as on unpublished correspondence, to counter the oft-repeated caricature of Larkin as a racist, misogynist reactionary." Your use of the word "caricature" indicates that the view of Larkin as racist, reactionary etc is wrong, or at least distorted. Having heard and read a geat deal of Larkin, I have no doubt that this was a significant part of his character. It was doubtless not all of him; but to suggest that he was "caricatured" as a racist etc is unjustified."


 * "The "Critical opinion" section is almost a list of opinions rather than a coherent, topically-based section. There is even a one-sentence paragraph. This section needs to be restructed so that the reader is led through the different ideas rather than through the different critics. The names of the critics are not so important as the ideas. Also, the critics should be grouped together better, to indicate broad trends in Larkin scholarship. The paragraph that begins "The view that Larkin is not a nihilist or pessimist, but actually displays optimism in his works, is certainly not universally endorsed, but Chatterjee's lengthy study suggests the degree to which old stereotypes of Larkin are now being transcended" is the best example of the kind of topical coherence that the rest of the section should have."

3.4 Posthumous rep

 * M3 says: "If so, can you reconcile how someone could love black music so much and hate blacks?" Personally, I'm not sure a reconciliation is possible, I think the contradiction remains. I recall two contrasting quotes: (a) "The Negro did not have the blues because he was naturally melancholy. He had them because he was cheated and bullied and starved." Does anyone know the source for this? (b) something in the letters about "the patter of Caribbean germs on the Underground", which I think I recall from the Letters. Again, can anyone find this? I think these two make for a good illustration of the problem.

3.5 Recordings

 * "The last three paragraphs of "Recordings" are a prose list - can you integrate these a bit more seamlessly?"


 * "Footnote 129 should indicate that the YouTube video is a recording of a SkyOne broadcast."

3.6 Fiction based on L's life

 * "The first paragraph ... should explain the content of the play a bit more."


 * "Footnote 133 - the link is broken"

4. General issues

 * "The first time any published work of Larkin's is mentioned, please put the publication date in parentheses next to it."


 * Article is overlinked


 * Alt text needed for the photos.


 * Please add publication locations to the references


 * "What makes this a reliable source?"


 * "Was this originally published in The Observer? It looks that way from the website. If so, that should be indicated in the footnote."


 * "This artice was originally published in Twentieth Century Literature (Summer 1996) - this needs to be indicated in the footnote."


 * "What makes this a reliable source?"


 * "What makes this Larkin biography a reliable source?"


 * "What makes this a reliable source?"

high windows reception
Of the reception of High Windows Richard Bradford writes, "the reviews were generally favourable, with the notable exception of Robert Nye in The Times, but each reflected the difficulty of writing a 500–1,000-word piece on a collection which, while short, compelled fascination and confusion. The admiration for the volume was genuine for most reviewers, but one also senses anxiety in their prose, particularly on how to describe the individual genius at work in poems such as "Annus Mirabilis", "The Explosion" and "The Building" and at the same time explain why each is so radically different. Nye overcomes this problem by treating the differences as ineffective masks for a consistently nasty presence"

Prose non-fiction
Larkin was a notable critic of modernism in contemporary art and literature. His scepticism is at its most nuanced and illuminating in Required Writing, a collection of his book reviews and essays, and at its most inflamed and polemical in his introduction to his collected jazz reviews, All What Jazz, drawn from the 126 record-review columns he wrote for The Daily Telegraph between 1961 and 1971, which contains an attack on modern jazz that widens into a wholesale critique of modernism in the arts. Despite the reputation Larkin not unwillingly acquired as an enemy of modernism, recent critical assessments of Larkin's writings have identified them as possessing some modernist characteristics.


 * "Once Larkin has classified modern jazz under the general heading of modernism, it is true that he knows where he is; he now has a way of explaining every feature of the music of Parker, Coltrane, and Davis. Unfortunately, this also means that jazz must now conform to his paradigm of modernism, and this produces a somewhat eccentric history of jazz."


 * "In "The Pleasure Principle" (1957) he charges that poetry has lost its true (that is, pleasure-seeking) audience through a kind of conspiracy between the poet, the literary critic, and the academic critic, three classes so indistinguishable that "the poet has gained the happy position wherein he can praise his own poetry in the press and explain it in the classroom" (RW 81). The audience that reads poetry for pleasure has been replaced by an audience of students who learn from their (mystifying) professors that "reading a poem is hard work" (RW 81)." [same]


 * "Still, it is intriguing to conceive of a jazz or blues intertext inhabiting the Larkin canon that may be glimpsed now and then, as in the opening of Larkin's last great poem "Aubade" (CP 208), "I work all day, and get half drunk at night," a line that, read in another context, could as easily be attributed to Sleepy John Estes or Blind Lemon Jefferson." [same, p.12]


 * "The possibility that Larkin himself may have doubted the sincerity of the introduction is suggested by his remarks to Donald Mitchell, to whom All What Jazz is dedicated, and to Peter Crawley, sales director at Faber & Faber. He told Mitchell that the introduction was "not perhaps to be taken very seriously" (Letters 408). To Crawley he said of the thesis of the introduction - that "post-Parker jazz is the equivalent of modernist developments in other arts": "I don't think this has actually been said before, and, while it may not be wholly defensible, I think it is sufficiently amusing to say once" (Letters 417)." [same, p.14]


 * "He characterizes the blues as "a kind of jazz that calls forth a particular sincerity from the player ('Yeah, he's all right, but can he play the blues?')," and he argues that the "Negro did not have the blues because he was naturally melancholy. He had them because he was cheated and bullied and starved" (AWJ 87, 224). The deprivation-daffodil parallel more aptly applies to the makers of the music to which Larkin was addicted and through which he experienced his privation secondhand." [same, p.1]


 * "And while Wordsworth remembers the "very Heaven" of being young at the time of the French Revolution, Larkin's later reflection on his youth was that it was his particular bliss to have been young at the only time he could have experienced the pleasure of jazz. Had he died on 9 August 1922 instead of being born then, or had he been born a decade or so later, he would have missed it all (AWJ 28), since, he notes, jazz was the "emotional excitement" peculiar to one generation, his own, that "came to adolescence" between the two World Wars. "In another age," he suggests, "it might have been drink or drugs, religion or poetry" (Letters 416, AWJ 15). Or daffodils or revolution. Larkin's claim to have substituted jazz for the inspirations and excitements of other ages is something more than his characteristic philistine pose, even if it is also that. Jazz was, along with poetry, the great passion of his life ("In many ways I prefer it to poetry")(3) and his reader may well wonder about the extent to which the two passions intersect."


 * "More than that, it was an unpretentious art built on a simple and direct emotional appeal that did not depend on an extensive musical education" [same, p.2]

Clive James on RW


 * "He has a way of bringing out the foibles of his fellow-artists while leaving their dignity at least intact and usually enhanced. To take his beloved Hardy as an example — and many other examples, from Francis Thompson to Wilfred Owen, would do as well — he convincingly traces the link between moral lassitude and poetic strength"


 * "He isn’t exactly telling us to Buy British, but there can be no doubt that he attaches little meaning to the idea of internationalism in the arts. All too vague, too unpindownable, too disrupting of the connections between literature and the life of the nation."


 * "In Required Writing the Impulse to Preserve is mentioned often. Larkin the critic, like Larkin the librarian, is a keeper of English literature"

Larkin and race

 * Yep, that's a nice story. I like the description of him in the penultimate paragraph--it's too easy to represent him as dour and death-obsessed. Ideally we would show all sides of his character. In the letters it's interesting to compare the Larkin who speaks to Betjeman with the one who speaks to Amis. The one horrible nettle that we do need to decide how to grasp is this one:

redone
Trying to resolve Larkin's contradictory opinions on race in his book Such Deliberate Disguises: The Art of Philip Larkin, the writer Richard Palmer quotes a letter Larkin wrote to Betjeman, as if it exposes "all the post-Motion and post-Letters furore about Larkin’s 'racism' as the nonsense it is":


 * "The American Negro is trying to take a step forward that can be compared only to the ending of slavery in the nineteenth century. And despite the dogs, the hosepipes and the burnings, advances have already been made towards giving the Negro his civil rights that would have been inconceivable when Louis Armstrong was a young man. These advances will doubtless continue. They will end only when the Negro is as well-housed, educated and medically cared for as the white man."

Reviewing Palmer's book, John G. Rodwan, Jr. wonders "if this does not qualify as the thought of a true racist: 'I find the state of the nation quite terrifying. In 10 years’ time we shall all be cowering under our beds as hordes of blacks steal anything they can lay their hands on.' Or this: 'We don’t go to [cricket] Test matches now, too many fucking niggers about.'"

Letters
Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985

The Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985 was a volume compiled by Anthony Thwaite, one of Philip Larkin's literary executors. It was published in 1992 by Faber and Faber.

Rose
Matthew Rose (born 1978 in Brighton) is an English operatic bass.

Biography
Rose studied at Seaford College, Petworth, Canterbury Christ Church University, and the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia. In 2003 he joined the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

He has performed at La Scala, Milan, The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, WNO, Houston Grand Opera, Opéra National de Lyon, Teatro Real, Madrid and ENO. He has sung most of the standard oratorio repertoire in concert, working with orchestras such as the LSO, the BBCSO and the CBSO, and has given recitals at venues such as the Wigmore Hall

NS
Nicholas Sharratt (born in Nottingham) is an English operatic tenor.

Biography
Sharratt studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Opera Studio.

He has performed the title role in Orpheus in the Underworld for Scottish Opera and Ernesto in Don Pasquale for English Touring Opera. Other lead roles have included Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore for Grange Park Opera and Pedrillo in Die Entführung aus dem Serail for Opera North.

In 2012 he will play Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville for English Touring Opera.

Operatic repertoire

 * Doctor in Vanessa by Barber
 * Don Fernando in Fidelio by Beethoven
 * Zuniga in Carmen by Bizet
 * Claggart, Lieutenant Ratcliffe & Mr Flint in Billy Budd (opera) by Britten
 * Abbott in Curlew River by Britten
 * Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Britten
 * Noye in Noye's Fludde by Britten
 * Swallow in Peter Grimes by Britten
 * Collatinus in The Rape of Lucretia by Britten
 * Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti
 * Talbot in Maria Stuarda by Donizetti
 * Albert in La Juive by Halevy
 * Haraschta in The Cunning Little Vixen by Janacek
 * Seneca in L'incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi
 * Speaker & Sarastro in The Magic Flute by Mozart
 * Leporello in Don Giovanni by Mozart
 * Publio in La clemenza di Tito by Mozart
 * Title role in The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart
 * Crespel in The Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach
 * Colline in La bohème by Puccini
 * Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville by Rossini
 * Truffuladino in Ariadne auf Naxos by Strauss
 * Tutor in Elektra by Strauss
 * Tiresias in Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky
 * Nick Shadow in The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky
 * Gremin in Yevgeny Onegin by Tchaikovsky
 * Il re in Aida by Verdi
 * Monk in Don Carlos by Verdi
 * Pistola in Falstaff by Verdi
 * Lodovico in Otello by Verdi
 * Tom in Un ballo in maschera by Verdi
 * Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Wagner
 * Fasolt in Das Rheingold by Wagner

Recordings
He has recorded with Sir Colin Davis (Berlioz L'enfance du Christ and a Child of our Time for LSO Live), Sir Charles Mackerras (Mozart Vespers and Schubert Mass in E flat with Dresden Staatskappelle), Richard Hickox (Schubert Mass in E flat), Antonio Pappano (Tristan and Isolde) and a CD of Liszt songs with Iain Burnside.

Visual arts

 * Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist, painting by Sandro Botticelli, 1488
 * Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, painting by Cornelis Engelbrechtsz, c. 1490
 * The Daughter of Herodias, painting by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1510
 * Salome, sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneider, 1500-1510
 * Salome, painting by Casare da Sesta, 1510-20
 * Salome, painting by Giampietrino, c. 1510-30,
 * Salome, painting by Alonso Berruguete, 1512-16
 * Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, painting by Titian, c. 1515
 * Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, painting by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen
 * Salome with the head of St John the Baptist, painting by Titian, c. 1530
 * Salome, painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1530
 * Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (Caravaggio, London), painting by Caravaggio, c. 1607
 * Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (Madrid) (Caravaggio), painting by Caravaggio, c. 1609
 * Salome, painting by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, 1615-20
 * Salome Dancing before Herod, painting by Jacob Hogers, c. 1630-55
 * Salome Presented with the Head of St. John the Baptist, painting by Leonaert Bramer, 1630s
 * Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, painting by Guido Reni, 1639-40
 * The Daughter of Herodias Receiving the Head of John the Baptist, by Gustave Doré, 1865
 * Salome, painting by Henri Regnault, 1870
 * Salome Dancing before Herod, painting by Gustave Moreau 1874-76
 * Salome, painting by Gustave Moreau, 1876
 * The Daughter of Herodias Dancing, painting by James Tissot, 1886-96
 * Salome, painting by Nikolai Astrup
 * Salome, painting by Franz von Stuck, 1906
 * Salome, painting by Robert Henri, 1909

Stage works

 * Salome (play) (1893), by Oscar Wilde
 * Salome (opera) (1905), by Richard Strauss
 * La tragédie de Salomé, 1907 ballet by Florent Schmitt
 * Salomé (Mariotte), 1908 opera by Antoine Mariotte to the Wilde play

Songs

 * Salome, a song by Karel Kryl (1965)
 * Salome, a song by The House of Love on their debut album, The House of Love (1988 album)
 * Salome, a 1990 song by U2:
 * included in the 1992 single "Even Better Than the Real Thing"
 * eight versions of the song included in Salome: The Axtung Beibi Outtakes (1993), a 3 disc studio bootleg of U2's Achtung Baby recording sessions
 * remix of the single included in the 1995 fan club compilation album Melon: Remixes for Propaganda
 * Salome, a song by Alcazar on their debut album Casino (2000)
 * Salome, a song by Lili Haydn on her debut album Lili (1997)
 * Salome, a song composed by Edward Shearmur on the original soundtrack of the motion picture The Governess (1998)
 * Salome, a song by the Old 97s, featured on their album Too Far to Care and sung live in the 2006 movie The Break Up
 * Salomé - The Seventh Veil, a 2007 album by Xandria which also features the song Salomé
 * When Salome plays the drum, a song by Jimmy Buffett, featured on his "Bars" disc of his "Bars, Beaches, Boats and Ballads" collection.
 * Salomé (song), a song written by popular Puerto Rican singer Chayanne.
 * Salomé, a song written by Pete Doherty.

Films

 * Salomé (1910 film) short film by Ugo Falena
 * Salomé (1918 film), starring Theda Bara
 * Salomé (1923 film)
 * Salome (1953 film), starring Rita Hayworth
 * Salome (1973 film), directed by Clive Barker
 * Salome (1986 film)
 * Salomé (2002 film), directed by Carlos Saura
 * Salome's Last Dance (1988), film by Ken Russell
 * Salome, a fictional West Texas town, which is the setting for the 1996 Kevin Costner film Tin Cup (most of the images in the opening sequence are taken in the tiny Arizona town of Salome)
 * Salomé (telenovela) (2001), Mexican telenovela starring Edith González
 * Salomé in Low Land (2006), pixel animation film by Christian Zagler (born Graz, 1980) based on Richard Strauss' opera; World premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2006

Literature

 * Salome: My First 2000 Years of Love (1953), novel by George S. Viereck and Paul Eldridge
 * Salomé – Five Plays (The Seven Veils, Dialogue with the Baptist, Salomé's Reward, The Chop and The Platter) by Nick Cave, included in King Ink, ISBN 1-880985-08-X, 1988, pp. 67-76
 * Salome, main character of the 1990 novel Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
 * Salome, a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, featured in The World's Wife (1999).
 * Salomé, novel by François Weyergans, written in 1968 but only published in 2005, the year he received the Prix Goncourt for Trois jours chez ma mère