Transcriptions of Philip Larkin's Poetry Workbooks by Professor A.T. Tolley

Scope and Content

Comprehensive notes relating to Philip Larkin's Poetry Workbooks, from those held at Hull University Archives and at the British Library. Features a page by page note of annotations, corrections and also records details of any portraits and where the text has been dated.

Administrative / Biographical History

Arnold Trevor Tolley was born in Birmingham on 15 May 1927 and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Queen's College Oxford. He has taught at a number of universities including in Finland (1955-1961), Australia (1961-1965) and was professor of Comparative Literature at Carleton University in Canada (1967-1996). He has published a number of books on Larkin including Larkin at Work (1997) a detailed study of all of Philip Larkin's Workbooks and Early Poems and Juvenilia, by Philip Larkin (2005). He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1998.

Professor Tolley describes the process (see U DX281/9) of undertaking this work which began with the workbook in the British Library in 1981 and then the items at the University Archives between 1993-1999. In both sets of the pages were made to correspond with the original workbooks.

Access Information

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Custodial History

Deposited by the Philip Larkin Society, 22 March 2001

Related Material

Larkin Workbook Nos 2-6 [U DPL/1/2-8] copies are available in the searchroom

Papers of Philip Larkin [U DLN]

Correspondence between A.T. Tolley and Larkin [U DP193]

My Proper Ground, published by Edinburgh University Press (1991) and Larkin at Work published by University of Hull Press (1997) written by Professor Tolley are amongst the University's Philip Larkin collection of texts by and about Larkin.

Other Repositories:

Larkin Workbook No 1, British Library [Ad. Ms 52619]