MTU Cork Library Catalogue

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John Betjeman's collected poems / John Betjeman ; compiled and with an introduction by the Earl of Birkenhead.

By: Betjeman, John, 1906-1984.
Contributor(s): Birkenhead, Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, Earl.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: London : J. Murray, 1980Edition: 4th edition.Description: xxxii, 427 p. ; 19 cm.ISBN: 0719536324 .Subject(s): English poetry -- 20th centuryDDC classification: 821.912
Contents:
Mount Zion (1932) -- Continual Dew (1937) -- Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) -- New Bats in old Belfries (1945) -- Selected Poems (1948) -- A few late Chrysanthemums (1954) -- Poems in the Porch (1954) -- Poems written after 1954 -- High and low (1966) -- A nip in the air (1974).
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
General Lending MTU Bishopstown Library Lending 821.912 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00033302
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The poetic work of John Betjeman is known both for its range and its mastery of form. Released for the first time in paperback, this selection of his poetry has sold more than two million copies and was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.

Includes index.

Mount Zion (1932) -- Continual Dew (1937) -- Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) -- New Bats in old Belfries (1945) -- Selected Poems (1948) -- A few late Chrysanthemums (1954) -- Poems in the Porch (1954) -- Poems written after 1954 -- High and low (1966) -- A nip in the air (1974).

Author notes provided by Syndetics

A leading modern champion of the values of an older England, John Betjeman was born in Highgate, London, to a well-off merchant family. The loneliness and suffering of his upbringing, first under nursemaids and then at a series of schools, often surface in his poetry. He went to Magdalene College, Oxford, where he belonged to the same smart social set as Evelyn Waugh.

Deliberately free from the difficulties of much modern verse, Betjeman's poetry harks back to a more accessible British tradition that includes Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Thomas Hardy. With quiet wit he resisted the debasements of modern mass culture in favor of an older England simpler, more rural, and more religious than the current one. Both W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin especially admired his work, and Auden even edited a selection of it. His harsher critics have found him unintellectual and sentimental. His poetry has achieved a huge circulation in Great Britain, with the Collected Poems (1958) reputedly selling more than 100,000 copies. Considered a national institution, he succeeded Cecil Day Lewis as poet laureate in 1972.

Betjeman worked in a variety of media and achieved wide public attention as host for a television series on the history of British architecture, one of his prime interests. He wrote a great deal on architecture, especially for the Architectural Review.

Betjeman died in 1984.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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