Anthony Thwaite

Anthony Simon Thwaite OBE (23 June 1930 – 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters.

Early years and education Born in Chester, England, to Yorkshire parents, Thwaite at the age of 10 crossed the Atlantic alone to spend the war years in and around Washington D.C., with an aunt and uncle.

Thwaite had two honorary doctorates, from University of Hull and from the University of East Anglia, near where he lived with his wife for 45 years. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was appointed an OBE for services to poetry in the 1990 New Year Honours. His Late Poems and Going Out appeared after the Collected Poems. At the launch of his last (20th) book of poems, when he was 85, the distinguished audience (including Alan Hollinghurst, David Lodge, P. J. Kavanagh and Penelope Lively) gave some indication of the esteem in which he is held by his fellow writers.

Thwaite died on 22 April 2021 at the age of 90.

Appraisal of his work Praise for Thwaite's poetry came from many fellow writers. The novelist Anthony Burgess commended him: "Very intelligent, also witty, with a wide stretch of subject matter and a great boldness." The playwright and novelist Michael Frayn wrote, "I think of all the living poets whose work I know Anthony Thwaite speaks to me most strongly and intimately. He writes with simplicity and precision about difficult and ambiguous things....the vastness and richness of the past, the elusiveness of the present - and the heroic persistence of our efforts to fix some trace of all this." Thwaite was pleased to be called "a fine comic poet" by Sean O'Brien. One of his best light poems was included by Christopher Ricks in his Oxford Book of English Verse, and Thwaite is also well represented in Larkin's Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse. Tobias Hill called him "a master of domestic disquiet" in The Times, reviewing his Collected Poems (2007). He wrote: "This is spectacular poetry. It deserves to be read: good readers deserve to read it."

Works Anthony Thwaite (Fantasy Press, 1953). Fantasy Poets 17 Oxford Poetry 1954 (1954), editor with Jonathan Price Poems (1957). Privately printed in Tokyo Essays on Contemporary English Poetry (1957) Home Truths (1957), poems Contemporary English Poetry - An Introduction (1961) New Poems 1961: A P.E.N Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (1961), editor with Hilary Corke and William Plomer The Owl in the Tree (1963), poems Japan in Color (1967) The Stones of Emptiness: Poems 1963-66 (1967) Deserts of Hesperides: an Experience in Libya (1969) At Dunkeswell Abbey (1970), broadside poem Penguin Modern Poets 18 (1970), with A. Alvarez and Roy Fuller Points (1972) Inscriptions, Poems 1967–72 (1973) Jack (1973) poem Poetry Today 1960-1973 (1973) Roloff Beny In Italy (1974), with Peter Porter, Gore Vidal New Confessions (1974), poems The English Poets - From Chaucer to Edward Thomas (1974), with Peter Porter Beyond the Inhabited World: Roman Britain (1977) A Portion for Foxes (1977), poems Twelve Poems (1978) Twentieth Century English Poetry : An Introduction (1978) New Poetry 4 (1978), Arts Council anthology, editor with Fleur Adcock Victorian Voices (1980), poems Odyssey : Mirror of the Mediterranean (1981) Larkin at Sixty (1982) editor The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (1983), editor with Geoffrey Bownas Telling Tales (1983) Poems 1953–1983 (1984) Six Centuries of Verse (1984), editor Poetry Today : A Critical Guide to British Poetry 1960–1984 (1985) Letter from Tokyo (1987) Collected Poems – Philip Larkin (The Marvell Press, Faber & Faber, 1988), editor Fourteen Poems Collected Poems of Philip Larkin (1989), editor Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985 (1992), editor Poetry Today: A critical guide to British poetry 1960–1995 (1996) R. S. Thomas - Everyman's Poetry (1996), editor Selected Poems 1956–1996 (1997) Longfellow (1997) editor Anthony Thwaite in Conversation (1999), with Peter Dale and Ian Hamilton Paeans for Peter Porter (1999), editor High Windows by Philip Larkin (2000), editor A Different Country (Enitharmon Press 2000), poems George MacBeth – Selected Poems (2002), editor Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements and Book Reviews, 1952–85, by Philip Larkin (2002), editor A Move in the Weather: Poems 1994–2002 (Enitharmon Press, 2003) Collected Poems – Philip Larkin (2003), editor Collected Poems (Enitharmon Press, 2007) Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica (Faber & Faber, Bodleian Library, 2010), editor Going Out (Enitharmon Press, 2015)