"Trouble at Willow Gables" and Other Fiction 1943-1953

by Philip Larkin

The book opens with works written under the pseudonym 'Brunette Coleman', including the two novellas, Trouble at Willow Gables and Michaelmas Term at St Bride's, and the poem sequence Sugar and Spice. The remainder of the volume is devoted to the unfinished drafts of two novels, No For An Answer and A New World Symphony, on which Larkin worked after the completion of A Girl in Winter. It ends with two short debats of 1950 and 1951, which pungently dramatise his sense of failure as a novelist and his rejection of marriage.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Poetry

498 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2002

About the author

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL, was an English poet, novelist and jazz critic. He spent his working life as a university librarian and was offered the Poet Laureateship following the death of John Betjeman, but declined the post. Larkin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century. He first came to prominence with the release of his third collection The Less Deceived in 1955. The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows followed in 1964 and 1974. In 2003 Larkin was chosen as "the nation's best-loved poet" in a survey by the Poetry Book Society, and in 2008 The Times named Larkin as the greatest post-war writer.

Larkin was born in city of Coventry, England, the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884–1948), city treasurer of Coventry, who came from Lichfield, and his wife, Eva Emily Day (1886–1977), of Epping. From 1930 to 1940 he was educated at King Henry VIII School in Coventry, and in October 1940, in the midst of the Second World War, went up to St John's College, Oxford, to read English language and literature. Having been rejected for military service because of his poor eyesight, Larkin was able, unlike many of his contemporaries, to follow the traditional full-length degree course, taking a first-class degree in 1943. Whilst at Oxford he met Kingsley Amis, who would become a lifelong friend and frequent correspondent. Shortly after graduating he was appointed municipal librarian at Wellington, Shropshire. In 1946, he became assistant librarian at University College, Leicester and in 1955 sub-librarian at Queen's University, Belfast. In March 1955, Larkin was appointed librarian at The University of Hull, a position he retained until his death.

Reviews

[Adrián Viéitez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se hace evidente que Larkin perdió el interés en su propia historia a la mitad de la segunda nouvelle que integra este libro, y es una pena: la primera al completo y el comienzo de la segunda son impecables y divertidísimas —además de profundamente cínicas, y moralmente delicadas—. Un gusto.

[Tabuyo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pues pese a que no he visto opiniones muy positivas a mí me ha gustado bastante.

Me han parecido dos nouvelles entretenidas, sobre todo la primera que, aunque no aportan nada nuevo, te sacan alguna sonrisa y tienen el punto justo de drama para mantener el interés.

Me han gustado mucho las jóvenes protagonistas que primero están internas en un colegio y después, en la segunda historia, estarán en una residencia universitaria.

[Gemma entre lecturas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo más interesiana de esta novela, dejando de lado el estilo inconfundible del autor, es la finalidad de los relatos cortos. Los dos fueron creados para el divertimento de los amigos del autor. Y sin leer más os aconsejo que os adentréis en su lectura y saquéis conclusiones.

[Glass River]

It’s not unusual for writers of impeccable canonical respectability secretively to dabble in forbidden literary territory. Edith Wharton left, among her unpublished papers, the sketch ‘Beatrice Palmato’, with its breathtakingly graphic – and outrageously erotic – description of a father’s rape of his half-daughter (much enjoyed on her part). Mark Twain wrote, for his and friends’ amusement, the fantasia ‘1601’, which pictures Queen Elizabeth presiding over a farting contest between Shakespeare, Jonson and Sir Walter Raleigh. Swinburne and others’ Whippingham Papers enjoyed an underground circulation among similarly disposed flagellophiles, and it is probable W. H. Auden’s ‘Platonic Blow [Job]’ also found a willing audience. T. S. Eliot’s Inventions of the March Hare surfaced into publication long after his death, featuring such bawdy and racist doggerel as: ‘A wild and hardy set of blacks’ possessed of ‘great big hairy balls’ and ‘big black knotty penises’.
There’s enough of the stuff to furnish an Oxford Anthology of Literary Naughtiness. And somewhere among its pages would be Larkin’s Trouble at Willow Gables. He wrote the one hundred-and-twenty-page spoof in the idle, mentally knackered period after his finals at Oxford, confiding to a friend in 1943, ‘I am spending my time doing an obscene Lesbian novel, in the form of a school story. Great fun.’ As part of the fun he assumed the pen name ‘Brunette Coleman’. He was spoofing, as those familiar with the girls’-boarding-school story genre would recognise, Angela Brazil and – more closely – Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s ‘Dimsie’ series with their hallmark Wal Paget covers invariably featuring flashing young legs. (Both Bruce and Brazil are reputed to have been discreet lesbians.) Larkin’s pen name was also, his biographer Andrew Motion suggests, a nod towards Blanche Coleman, the leader of an all-girl band, whose jazz-inflected swing was to Larkin’s taste at this period of his life.
Accompanying the story is an owlish essay (in the Coleman persona), ‘What are We Writing For?’ The phrase echoes a question (‘What are we fighting for?) much bandied about in the war years. Winston Churchill is supposed to have asked it when it was proposed to him that the West End theatres be closed. What was England fighting for? Getting Gertie’s Garter and Chu Chin Chow. Larkin’s is an extended joke along the same lines. Already possessed of the librarian’s archival instincts, he kept the manuscript. It was resurrected, edited and published long after his death, doing his reputation little good.
Trouble at Willow Gables revels in a little world of gymslips, liberty bodices, jim-jams, flashing hockey sticks, and furtive events in the dorm. The most daring scene in the narrative describes the thrills of knickerless horse riding (Larkin was a devout Lawrentian at this period). Other highpoints identify the author’s niche ‘preference’ for bondage and sadism, as in the following ‘six of the best’ episode:
As Pam finally pulled Marie’s tunic down over her black-stockinged legs, Miss Holden, pausing only to snatch a cane from the cupboard on the wall, gripped Marie by the hair and, with a strength lent by anger, forced her head down until she was bent nearly double. Then she began thrashing her unmercifully, her face a mask of ferocity, caring little where the blows fell as long as they found a mark somewhere on Marie’s squirming body.
This is as hot as the story gets.
The plot centres on Hilary, ‘a semi-intellectual sixth-former’, a strapping (in every sense) girl, ‘with a strongly-moulded body, damp lips, and smouldering, discontented eyes’. Hilary smokes and has graduated into suspenders and bra – flagrantly displayed in the dorm. She develops a crush on fourth-former Mary, downy-skinned, mordant-toothed, possessing ‘a figure that a Spartan girl might have envied’, and something of a swot. The wooing climaxes with vaguely described groping beneath the poplin pyjamas. Hilary is eventually expelled for sexual misconduct, after a complicated business which involves a stolen £5 note, blackmail, and acts of naughtiness which stop well short of the ‘real thing’.
An unthrilled Kingsley Amis, one of the Oxford pals to whom Larkin read out the story, called it a ‘soft-porn fairy story’. Let’s leave it at that. Interesting, though, to know what first-class minds were fantasising about in 1943.

[Will Schumer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It should be noted that Trouble at Willow Gables, and its sequel, Michaelmas Term at St. Brides, are the only texts really worth reading. Pseudonymously written by Larkin as a woman, these very early struggles with prose are interesting looks at what might have been for him. The first two stories are pseudo-Sapphic romances. A miserable article in the Observer called it pornographic, but I'd take what they say with a grain of salt. I would say Larkin illustrates a humorous fantasy of the Oxford girls of his day, a response to his inability to get laid, though not with anger, but more as a creative outlet.

[Ester Styles · Rating 4 out of 5]

He de reconocer que la autobiografía no me la he leído porque me da igual, tbh.

La novela me ha gustado, no creo que sea brillante, pero entiendo que por los años 1930/50 las historias eran de cosas que pasaban, quiero decir, más realistas en cuanto a la vida de las protagonistas, y esta obra es entretenida, pero ha habido momentos en los que me hubiera gustado ponerlo a x2 u omitir algunas partes que simplemente bah.

Creo que le daría un 3,5, pero le dejo las 4⭐ porque bueno.

[Pervinca · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting to read boarding school novels from a more mature perspective. The first novel I enjoyed a lot: it felt nostalgic but also more adult than the others i have read. The second one was a little bit more over the place: i liked the fact that we see the same characters and where they end up, but i was wondering were was the plot leading us only to discover that the second novel is unfinished! Such a same. But i still enjoyed it a lot.

[Jaione · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eskola bateko nesken gorabeherak eta unibertsitatea hasten dutenekoak. Garai hartako eskola sistemari kritika da.
Neskez ari arren, mutilez ari ote denaren susmoa izan dut denbora guztian... Entretenigarria.

[Begoña Alonso · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
Un libro muy bien escrito pero con trama irregular ; a veces se hace un poco pesado. Consta de dos novelas, la primera es mejor que la segunda, deslavazada e incompleta.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an uneven collection but it's very well-edited by James Booth and contains plenty of good stuff. It will mainly be of interest to Larkin specialists but camp enthusiasts should enjoy it, too.