The Complete Poems of William Empson
- List Price: $39.95
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida
- Publish date: 03/01/2001
Empson's poems have a range of themes from metaphysics to melancholy, social climbing to political satire, love to loss. Above all, he was stimulated by the implications of modern science, which he called "the only fertile part of the contemporary mind".
This volume brings together for the first time all the poems that Empson published in his lifetime and several more discovered since his death. Drawing on unpublished papers, interviews, readings, and broadcasts, John Haffenden's introduction and annotations identify manuscript sources, allusions, and intertexts. The volume also includes Empson's own notes, which he regarded as a vital complement to the poetry. Sir William Empson was educated at Winchester and Cambridge and taught at Tokyo University, Peking National University, and the University of Sheffield, where he was chair of English literature from 1952 until his retirement in 1971. He was knighted in 1979 and died in London in 1984.