The Life of Kingsley AmisKingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation, but also a dominant figure in post–World War II British writing as a novelist, poet, critic, and polemicist. Zachary Leader’s definitive, authorized biography conjures in vivid detail the life of one of the most controversial figures of twentieth-century literature, renowned for his blistering intelligence, savage wit, and belligerent fierceness of opinion. In The Life of Kingsley Amis, Leader, the acclaimed editor of The Letters of Kingsley Amis, draws not only on published and unpublished works and correspondence, but also on interviews with a wide range of Amis’s friends, relatives, fellow writers, students, and colleagues, many of whom have never spoken publicly before. The result is a compulsively readable account of Amis’s childhood, school days, and life as a student at Oxford, teacher, critic, political and cultural commentator, professional author, husband, father, and lover. Neither evading nor sensationalizing the more salacious aspects of Amis’s life, Leader explores the writer’s phobias, self-doubts, and ambitions; the controversies in which he was embroiled; and the role that drink played in a life bedeviled by erotic entanglements, domestic turbulence, and personal disaster. Here is the biography that its subject deserves. Like Amis himself, it is incisive and unsentimental, deeply appreciative of aesthetic achievement, and a great source of amusing anecdotes. Dazzling for its thoroughness, psychological acuity, and elegant style, The Life of Kingsley Amis is exemplary: literary biography at its very best. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Family IO 2 Reading and Writing | 35 |
City of London | 52 |
CLS at Marlborough 71 2 2 | 71 |
Wartime Oxford | 92 |
The War | 128 |
Postwar Oxford | 161 |
Oxford and Eynsham | 204 |
Cambridge | 449 |
Waking Beauty | 471 |
Breakup | 500 |
Divisions | 521 |
Lefties Toffs and Bigots | 559 |
Lemmons | 600 |
Dissolution | 642 |
Nadir | 684 |
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Amis and Jane Amis told Amis wrote Amis's Amises Anthony Anthony Powell Anti-Death League Archer asked Biography Blackmur Blake Morrison Bodleian boys called Cambridge Colin College Conquest December Dixon drink Elizabeth Jane Howard Ellingham English Eric Jacobs essay Faber father friends funny Fussell Gollancz Hilly Hilly's Huntington Ibid interview Jake's Thing Jane's January jazz John July June Keeley Kingsley Amis later Lemmons letter to Larkin literary lived London look Lucky Jim lunch March Martin Amis Memoirs never Notes to Pages novel novelist November October Old Devils Oxford party Penguin Peterhouse Philip Larkin poems poet poetry political Princeton published Quoted recalls remembers Robert Conquest Russian Hide-and-Seek Sally Salwak September Slipstream sort stay story suggested Sunday Swansea talk tell things thought tion took Uncertain Feeling Wain week wife women writing wrote to Larkin