Philip Larkin - The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin

For help of various kinds I am grateful to: Professor James Booth; Bill and Mairi Burnett; my son William; Brian and Catherine Chaney; Amit Dav; Alex B. Effgen; Katy Evans Pritchard; my colleague Marilyn Gaull; Charlotte Graves-Taylor; the late Jean Hartley; Paul Keegan; Professor John Kelly; Joe McCann (Maggs Bros. Ltd.); my wife Janet; Mary Morris; Leon and Paul Naiditch; James L. Orwin; Dr John Osborne; David and Shirley Popham; my colleague Christopher Ricks; Donald Sommerville; Matt Tantony; Ann Thwaite; the late Jeff Vent (to whom I owe most of the notes on King Henry VIII School, Coventry); Simon Westmancoat; Frances Whistler; and Edward P. Wilson.

The staffs of several libraries have greatly facilitated research: the Bodleian Library (Dr Christopher Fletcher; Oliver House; Colin Harris; Dr Judith Priestman, who kindly arranged access to restricted papers, provided expert guidance through the Bodleian archives of Larkin papers and checked several references; Julia Wagner; Rebecca Wall); the British Library (Michael Boggan); the Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull (Judy Burg, Kate Butler, Nicola Herbert, Helen E. Roberts, Laura Wilson, Simon Wilson); the Huntington Library; Queens University, Belfast (Ursula Mitchel); and the Poetry Collection, University of Buffalo, The State University of New York (Dr James Maynard).

I am very grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for awarding me a Research Fellowship that freed me from teaching and administrative responsibilities for two semesters and thus enabled me to advance the work substantially towards publication. For covering the cost of research trips I am grateful to Boston University, and also to Christopher Ricks, who generously made available funds from his Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award. Boston University also funded research assistance from Jay Vithalani, a PhD student at the Editorial Institute, who expertly unearthed copies of early printings in periodicals as well as books and articles on the poetry. Another of the Institutes PhD students, Silvia Glick, proofread the final typescript.

Special thanks must go to Anthony Thwaite, who over the years has done more than anyone for Larkin. Even when making corrections to his text in Collected Poems, or taking a different editorial view, I have been aware of building on the foundation he laid down. At typescript stage, he generously offered numerous corrections and suggestions that have resulted in significant improvements.