Amis, Kingsley

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[[Image:Kingsleyamis.jpg|left|180px|thumb|The cover of Kingsley Amis' Collected Letters, published in 2000]]
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'''Sir Kingsley William Amis''' (April 16, 1922 – [[October 22]], [[1995]]) was an [[England|English]] novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than twenty novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He was the father of the British novelist [[Martin Amis]].
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'''Sir Kingsley William Amis''' (April 16, 1922 – October 22, 1995) was an [[England|English]] poet, academic, novelist, and teacher. Amis was considered an anti-authority revolutionary, as well as one of the "angry young men" of the 1950s (though he denied his participation). In time some came to consider him a reactionary. His early struggle with money and education instilled in Amis the desire to create his destiny and make his life more than what others thought it could be.
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He was a highly intelligent and witty man whose writings reflect his deep awareness of the complexities of human nature. His works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of [[World War II]] in 1945. Amis penned over 20 novels, published three collections of poetry, and wrote short stories and scripts for radio and television. His later writings showed his maturity as a critic and consisted mainly of books concerned with purely social and literary criticism. Amis is also known for the work of his son, [[Martin Amis]], a famous British writer.  
  
 
== Biography ==
 
== Biography ==
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Kingsley Amis was born in [[Clapham]], [[South London]], educated at the [[City of London School]] and [[St. John's College, Oxford]], where he met [[Philip Larkin]], with whom Amis formed the most important friendship of his life. After serving in the [[Royal Corps of Signals]] in the Second World War, Amis completed university in 1947, and was a lecturer in English at the [[University of Wales Swansea]] (1948–61), and at [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]] (1961–63), where he was a fellow of [[Peterhouse]].  
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Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, South London, as the only son of a business man. Not much is recorded of Kingsley Amis childhood, but he completed his secondary education and went on to pursue higher education at the [[City of London School]] and [[St. John's College, Oxford]]. It was while studying at Oxford that he met [[Philip Larkin]]. The two became friends and that friendship would prove to be one of the most important of his life. During his time at Oxford, Amis was made aware of his lower-middle-class origins and he sought to better his education and made goals for improving his life. He spent a brief time away from Oxford to serve his country during [[World War II]] in the [[Royal Corps of Signals]]. Amis was determined to finish college and as soon as his service and the war were over, he returned to Oxford and graduated in 1947. That same year Amis published his first book of poetry, ''Bright November'', but it was largely overlooked and received no critical acclaim.
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In 1948, Amis fell in love with bright and sunny 17-year-old Hilary Bardwell. He lovingly called her "Hills" and the couple began their marriage with the birth of their son Martin in 1949. Martin would grow up to be a famous author himself and even wrote an autobiographical account of his life as Amis son. He called it ''Experience''; it was a very straightforward novel written with a similar humor as his father and many compared the quality of his descriptions to those of [[Charles Dickens]].
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{{Quotation| I slept in a drawer and had my baths in an outdoor sink. My nappies bore triangular singe marks where they had been dried on the fireguard. It was tough. My father's dinner would often consist of the contents of the doggybag that my mother brought back from the cinema café (the Tivoli) where she worked.| Martin Amis| Experience|}}
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Amis, now needing to support a growing family, went on to work as an English lecturer at the [[University of Wales Swansea]] (1948–1961), and followed that with teaching at [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]] (1961–1963), where he distinguished himself as a fellow of [[Peterhouse]]. Although money was tight things changed for the better with the publication of Amis' first novel, ''Lucky Jim''. The novel was published in 1954 and became an immediate success in the literary world. ''Lucky Jim'' was an innovative work for several reasons, foremost among them is the fact that Amis featured a simple and ordinary man as an [[anti-hero]]. The novel centers around Jim Dixon, a junior university teacher who consistently faces problems with his girlfriend and his supervising professor. He tries to reconcile himself to his occupation, only to realize that he despises anything dealing with the pretensions of "academic life." Constantly spurred on by ambition for a better place in life, Jim finds himself unable to break the bonds of social classes and he finds himself in constant peril of losing his job. The story was considered exemplary of the 1950s era in Britain. It went on to win the [[Somerset Maugham Award]] for fiction. During his time of popularity, Amis was reported to have had associations with the group of writers who called themselves the [[Angry Young Men]].
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Although Amis found great success as a novelist, he did not stop writing poetry. He joined the poetic group, [[Movement (literature)|The Movement]], which consisted of his dear friend Philip Larkin, as well as [[Robert Conquest]] and [[Elizabeth Jennings]]. The group helped to encourage Amis' poetry and he published his second collection of poems, ''A Frame of Mind'' in 1953, followed by ''Poems: Fantasy Portraits'' in 1954. Both Amis and Larkin shared a passion for jazz and politics. Amis was a noted [[atheist]] and, as a young man, a vocal member of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain|Communist Party]]. His stint with Communism began to wane when the USSR invaded Hungary in 1956. After the events of 1956 Amis became very anti-communist and very conservative. He inserted his newfound ideals in his writings, beginning with his essay, "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967). These same sentiments can be felt in his later novel ''Russian Hide and Seek'' (1980).
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===Later life===
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As Amis political life turned conservative, his personal life was anything but. He ended his 15–year marriage to Hilary Bardwell when he left her for fellow novelist [[Elizabeth Jane Howard]] in 1965. Amis married Jane (as she was called), but was given a taste of his own medicine when she walked out on him in 1983, declaring that he was impossible to live with. The couple had one daughter. Amis made it no secret that he regretted leaving Hilary. In an odd and extraordinary turn of events, Amis arranged to live with Hilary, their two children, Martin and Philip, as well as her new husband. Hilary and her husband Alistair had one son together, James. The group lived together for the next 15 years until Amis death in 1995. Hilary nursed Amis during his last years, caring for all of his needs.
  
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Amis achieved popular success with his first novel ''[[Lucky Jim]]'', which is considered by many to be an exemplary novel of 1950s Britain. The novel won the [[Somerset Maugham Award]] for fiction and Amis was associated with the writers labelled the [[Angry Young Men]]. ''Lucky Jim'' is a [[seminal work]], the first English novel featuring an ordinary man as [[anti-hero]]. As a poet, Amis was associated with [[Movement (literature)|The Movement]].
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In 1990, Amis was knighted and according to his son Martin he got it partly for being "audibly and visibly right-wing, or conservative/monarchist." Martin Amis in his memoir, ''Experience'', wrote of losing his father: "The intercessory figure, the father, the man who stands between the son and death, is no longer here; and it won't ever be the same. He is missing. But I know it is common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. My father lost his father, and my children will lose theirs, and their children (this is immensely onerous to contemplate) will lose theirs."
  
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Like Philip Larkin, Amis was a keen jazz fan, with a particular enthusiasm for the American musicians [[Sidney Bechet]], [[Red Allen|Henry "Red" Allen]] and [[Pee Wee Russell]] [about whom Amis and Larkin corresponded extensively — see 'The Letters of Kingsley Amis', edited by Zachary Leader, HarperCollins, 2000].
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==Writing Career==
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{{Quotation|You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.|Kingsley Amis|
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from ''Lucky Jim'', 1954|}}
  
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As a young man, Kingsley Amis was a vocal member of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain|Communist Party]]. He became disillusioned with Communism, breaking with it when the USSR invaded [[Hungary]] in 1956. Thereafter, Amis became anti-communist, and conservative. He discusses his political change of heart in the  essay "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967), and it percolates into later works such as his dystopian novel ''Russian Hide and Seek'' (1980).
 
  
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Amis was an [[atheist]] and novels such as ''[[The Green Man]]'' and ''The Anti-Death League'' were in part speculations about the personality of a divine being and its relation to death and dying.
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===Science Fiction ===
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In 1960, Kingsley Amis wrote ''New Maps of Hell'' and his critical interest in the [[science fiction]] genre began. It was in this novel that one of Amis most popular phrases, "comic inferno" was coined. The phrase describes a humorous [[dystopia]] (a society characterized by human misery and squalor). Amis differed from other writers in his depiction of such a world because of such humor. In particular, Amis found inspiration in the works of [[Frederick Pohl]], [[Cyril M. Kornbluth|C.M. Kornbluth]], and [[Robert Sheckley]]. His next try at science fiction was a production of a popular anthology series, ''Spectrum'' I-IV. Amis found his main source of inspiration in the 1950s magazine, ''Astounding Science Fiction''. He co-wrote the series with [[Robert Conquest]], a prominent [[Sovietology|Sovietologist]]. Shortly after the successful series, Amis wrote three novels in quick succession, ''The Alteration'', which is an [[Alternate history (fiction)|alternate history]] novel set in a futuristic Britain where the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]] never took place; ''Russian Hide-and-Seek'', another alternate history that explores a world where Russia conquered Britain at the end of [[World War II]]; and finally, the very popular supernatural-horror novel ''The Green Man'', which was eventually adapted by the [[BBC]] for television.
  
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Amis's novel about a group of retired friends, ''[[The Old Devils]]'', won the [[Booker Prize]] in 1986. Like many of his novels it is a social comedy, embodying the author's pessimistic view of human relations and conduct, and his hostility to the false or pretentious. He received a knighthood in 1990.
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Amis was a great conversationalist, and he loved to discuss ideas and stories with others. One such event transpired with [[C. S. Lewis]] and [[Brian Aldiss]] in Lewis's Cambridge office in 1962. The three maintain a purely science-fiction dialogue and the conversation was recorded. Later, Lewis transcribed the event and titled it "Unreal Estates" and put it in one of his final collections, ''On Stories''.
  
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Amis was twice married, first in 1948 to Hilary Bardwell, then to novelist [[Elizabeth Jane Howard]] in 1965 (they divorced in 1983). Amis spent his last years sharing the house of his first wife and her third husband. He had three children, including the novelist [[Martin Amis]], who wrote of his father's life and decline in his memoir ''Experience''.
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===James Bond===
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In the 1960s, Kingsley Amis broke from his science-fiction work when he began writing for the popular [[James Bond]] series created by [[Ian Fleming]]. Amis did much of this writing without credit as he worked under a pseudonym, sometimes with no credit at all. In 1965, Amis wrote a Bond novel under his own name. The novel, ''The James Bond Dossier'' was very successful so he wrote another the very same year. ''The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007'' was a manual about how to be a sophisticated spy. This spy uses the pseudonym Bill Tanner, Tanner being "M," Bond's Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels.  
  
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== Science fiction ==
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After Fleming's death in 1964, there was a rumor that is was Amis who completed the draft of ''The Man with the Golden Gun'', but in recent years this story was proven false, although Amis did offer suggestions on the improvement of the manuscript.  
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Amis's critical interest in [[science fiction]] led to ''[[New Maps of Hell]]'' (1960), his interpretation of the genre's literary qualities. He was particularly enthusiastic about the [[dystopia]]n works of [[Frederik Pohl]] and [[Cyril M. Kornbluth|C.M. Kornbluth]], and in ''New Maps of Hell'' he coined the term "comic inferno", describing a type of humorous dystopia, particularly as exemplified in the works of [[Robert Sheckley]]. With the [[Sovietology|Sovietologist]] [[Robert Conquest]], Amis produced the science fiction anthology series ''[[Spectrum]]'' I–IV, which drew heavily upon the 1950s magazine ''[[Astounding Science Fiction]]''. He wrote three science fiction novels, ''[[The Alteration]]'', an [[Alternate history (fiction)|alternate history]] novel set in a twentieth-century Britain where the [[Reformation]] never occurred; ''[[Russian Hide-and-Seek]]'', an alternate history where Russia had conquered Britain after the Second World War; and the supernatural-horror novel ''[[The Green Man]]'', which the [[BBC]] adapted for television.
 
  
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A tape-recorded conversation on science fiction took place between Amis, [[C. S. Lewis]] and [[Brian Aldiss]] in Lewis's rooms at Cambridge in December 1962, shortly before Lewis's death. A transcript appears under the title 'Unreal Estates' in the collection ''On Stories'' by C. S. Lewis.
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In 1968, the owners of the James Bond property, Glidrose Publications, desired to continue the publication of the popular series under the pseudonym "Robert Markham." Amis was the very first to write under this name. He produced, ''Colonel Sun'', but that was the last book ever published by "Markham." ''Colonel Sun'', which was very successful, was later adapted as a [[comic strip]] and appeared in the ''[[Daily Express]]'' in 1969. Although ''Colonel Sun'' was never made into a Bond film (because of producer problems), it was clearly referenced in 2002's ''Die Another Day'', starring Pierce Brosnan, where the villain was named Colonel Tan-Sun Moon.
  
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==James Bond==
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{{Quotation| The empty room gazed bleakly at Bond. As always, everything was meticulously in its place, the lines of naval prints exactly horizontal on the walls, water-colour materials laid out as if for inspection on the painting-table up against the window. It all had a weirdly artificial, detached air, like part of a museum where the furniture and effects of some historical figure are preserved just as they were in his lifetime.| Kingsley Amis| Colonel Sun|}}
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Kingsley Amis became associated with [[Ian Fleming]]'s [[James Bond]] in the 1960s, writing critical works connected with the fictional spy, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular ''[[The James Bond Dossier]]'' under his own name. That same year, he wrote, ''[[The Book of Bond|The Book of Bond, or, Every Man His Own 007]]'', a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym "[[Bill Tanner|Lt Col. William ('Bill') Tanner]]", Tanner being [[M (James Bond)|M]]'s Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels.  
 
  
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It is widely claimed that after Fleming died in 1964 following completion of an early draft of ''[[The Man with the Golden Gun (novel)|The Man with the Golden Gun]]'', the publisher commissioned Amis and possibly other writers to finish the manuscript. Bond historians and Fleming biographers have in recent years debunked this theory, indicating that no such [[ghostwriter]] was ever employed, though Amis did provide suggestions on how to improve the manuscript, later rejected. [See ''[[The Man with the Golden Gun (novel)|here]] for more on the controversy]
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===Other works===
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Amis also produced anthologies like ''The New Oxford Book of Light'' (1978) and ''The Popular Reciter'' (1978).) The first ''The Oxford Book of Light Verse'' was published in 1938 with W.H. Auden selections. Amis' collection—which includes familiar favorites as well as previously unpublished masterpieces—is lighter in heart than Auden's and closer to a modern understanding of the meaning of "light."  He also wrote works on drink, columns on food for ''Harper's'' and ''Queen'', detective books, critical studies—''Rudyard Kipling and His World'' (1975), ''Memoirs''(1990), ''The King's English'' (1998), and mini-essays on the craft of writing well.
  
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In 1968 the owners of the James Bond property, [[Glidrose Publications]], attempted to continue the series by hiring different novelists, all writing under the pseudonym "[[Robert Markham]]". Kingsley Amis was the first to write a Robert Markham novel, ''[[Colonel Sun]]'', but no further books were published under that name. It is widely believed that Amis had planned to write a second Bond novel but was talked out of it. ''Colonel Sun'' was adapted as a [[comic strip]] in the ''[[Daily Express]]'' in 1969. In a 2005 [[Titan Books]] reprint volume of the comic strip, an introductory chapter indicated that Amis planned to write a short story featuring an elderly Bond coming out of retirement for one last mission, but Glidrose refused him permission to write it. Amis was unsuccessful at persuading [[EON Productions]] to adapt his novel as a film. According to the Titan Books introductory chapter, Amis was told that [[Harry Saltzman]] (co-producer of the Bond series up until 1974) had "blackballed" any use of ''Colonel Sun'' as a Bond film, apparently in response to Glidrose having rejected the publication of the post-Fleming Bond novel, ''[[Per Fine Ounce]]'' by [[Geoffrey Jenkins]], which Saltzman had championed. In 2002, however, ''Colonel Sun'' was clearly referenced in the James Bond film ''[[Die Another Day]]'' in which the villain was named [[Gustav Graves|Colonel Tan-Sun Moon]].
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His last, unfinished, novel was ''Black and White'', about an attraction between a white homosexual man and a black heterosexual girl.
  
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==Partial bibliography==
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==Awards==
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{{wikiquote}}
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In addition to the Somerset Maugham Award he won for ''Lucky Jim'', in 1983 a jury commissioned by the British Book Marketing Council declared ''Take a Girl Like You'' one of the dozen best novels written in English since 1945. In 1986, Amis won the Booker Prize for ''The Old Devils''. He also won the Campbell Award for the year's best science-fiction with ''The Alteration'' in 1976.
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:[[1947 in literature|1947]] Amis's first collection of poems, ''Bright November''  
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:[[1953 in literature|1953]] ''A Frame of Mind''
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His son, Martin Amis, was also awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, in addition to the National Book League Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
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:[[1954 in literature|1954]] ''Poems: Fantasy Portraits''.  
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:1954 ''[[Lucky Jim]]'', Amis' first novel
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==Bibliography==
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:[[1955 in literature|1955]] ''That Uncertain Feeling''
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:[[1956 in literature|1956]] ''A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956''.
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:1947 Amis's first collection of poems, ''Bright November''  
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:[[1957 in literature|1957]] ''Socialism and the Intellectuals''. A Fabian Society pamphlet
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:1953 ''A Frame of Mind''
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:[[1958 in literature|1958]] ''I Like it Here''
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:1954 ''Poems: Fantasy Portraits''.  
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:[[1960 in literature|1960]] ''[[Take A Girl Like You]]''
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:1954 ''Lucky Jim'', Amis' first novel ISBN 0142180149
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:1960 ''New Maps of Hell''
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:1955 ''That Uncertain Feeling''
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:1960 ''[[Hemingway]] in Space (short story), [[Punch magazine|Punch]] Dec 1960''
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:1956 ''A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956''.
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:[[1962 in literature|1962]] ''My Enemy's Enemy''
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:1957 ''Socialism and the Intellectuals''. A Fabian Society pamphlet
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:1958 ''I Like it Here''
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:1960 ''Take A Girl Like You'' ISBN 0140018484
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:1960 ''New Maps of Hell'' ISBN 0405063210
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:1960 ''Hemingway in Space (short story), ''Punch'' magazine Dec 1960''
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:1962 ''My Enemy's Enemy'' ISBN 0575008164
 
:1962 ''The Evans County''
 
:1962 ''The Evans County''
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:[[1963 in literature|1963]] ''One Fat Englishman''
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:1963 ''One Fat Englishman'' ISBN 0671671197
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:[[1965 in literature|1965]] ''The Egyptologists'' (with [[Robert Conquest]]).
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:1965 ''The Egyptologists'' (with Robert Conquest).
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:1965 ''[[The James Bond Dossier]]''
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:1965 ''The James Bond Dossier'' ISBN 9997512286
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:1965 ''[[The Book of Bond|The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007]]'', under the pseudonym "[[Bill Tanner|Lt.-Col William ('Bill') Tanner]]"
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:1965 ''The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007'', under the pseudonym "Bill Tanner"
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:[[1966 in literature|1966]] ''The Anti-Death League''
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:1966 ''The Anti-Death League'' ISBN 014002803X
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:[[1968 in literature|1968]] ''[[Colonel Sun]]'', a [[James Bond]] novel, under the pseudonym "[[Robert Markham]]."
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:1968 ''Colonel Sun'', a James Bond novel, under the pseudonym "Robert Markham." ISBN 101845761758
 
:1968 ''I Want It Now''
 
:1968 ''I Want It Now''
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:[[1969 in literature|1969]] ''[[The Green Man]]''
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:1969 ''The Green Man'' ISBN 0897332202
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:[[1970 in literature|1970]] ''What Became of Jane Austen and Other Questions''
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:1970 ''What Became of Jane Austen and Other Questions''
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:[[1971 in literature|1971]] ''Girl, 20''
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:1971 ''Girl, 20''
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:[[1972 in literature|1972]] ''On Drink''
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:1972 ''On Drink'' ISBN 0224007971
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:[[1973 in literature|1973]] ''The Riverside Villas Murders''
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:1973 ''The Riverside Villas Murders'' ISBN 0151777209
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:[[1974 in literature|1974]] ''Ending Up''
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:1974 ''Ending Up'' ISBN 0151287961
 
:1974 ''Rudyard Kipling and his World''
 
:1974 ''Rudyard Kipling and his World''
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:[[1976 in literature|1976]] ''[[The Alteration]]''
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:1976 ''The Alteration'' ISBN 0881844322
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:[[1978 in literature|1978]] ''Jake's Thing''
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:1978 ''Jake's Thing'' ISBN 0140050965
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:[[1979 in literature|1979]] ''Collected Poems 1944-78''
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:1979 ''Collected Poems 1944-78''
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:[[1980 in literature|1980]] ''Russian Hide-and-Seek''
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:1980 ''Russian Hide-and-Seek'' ISBN 0091420504
 
:1980 ''Collected Short Stories''
 
:1980 ''Collected Short Stories''
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:[[1983 in literature|1983]] ''Every Day Drinking''
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:1983 ''Every Day Drinking''
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:[[1984 in literature|1984]] ''How's Your Glass?''
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:1984 ''How's Your Glass?''
 
:1984 ''Stanley and the Women''
 
:1984 ''Stanley and the Women''
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:[[1986 in literature|1986]] ''[[The Old Devils]]''
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:1986 ''The Old Devils'' ISBN 0060971460
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:[[1988 in literature|1988]] ''Difficulties With Girls''
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:1988 ''Difficulties With Girls''
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:[[1990 in literature|1990]] ''The Folks That Live on the Hill''
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:1990 ''The Folks That Live on the Hill''
 
:1990 ''The Amis Collection''
 
:1990 ''The Amis Collection''
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:[[1991 in literature|1991]] ''Memoirs''
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:1991 ''Memoirs'' ISBN 0671749099
 
:1991 ''Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories''
 
:1991 ''Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories''
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:[[1992 in literature|1992]] ''The Russian Girl''
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:1992 ''The Russian Girl'' ISBN 0670853291
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:[[1994 in literature|1994]] The semi-autobiographical ''You Can't Do Both''
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:1994 The semi-autobiographical ''You Can't Do Both'' ISBN 0091803195
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:[[1995 in literature|1995]] ''The Biographer's Moustache''
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:1995 ''The Biographer's Moustache'' ISBN 0002253305
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:[[1997 in literature|1997]] ''The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage''
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:1997 ''The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage'' ISBN 0312186010
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:[[2001 in literature|2001]] "[[The Letters of Kingsley Amis]]", Edited by Zachary Leader
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:2001 ''The Letters of Kingsley Amis'', Edited by Zachary Leader ISBN 0786867574
  
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==Poets in ''The Amis Anthology: A Personal Choice of English Verse'' (1988) ==
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==References==
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[[Richard Aldington]] - [[Kenneth Allott]] - [[Matthew Arnold]] - [[Kenneth Ashley]] - [[W. H. Auden]] - [[William Barnes]] - [[Oliver Bayley]] - [[Hilaire Belloc]] - [[John Betjeman]] - [[Laurence Binyon]] - [[William Blake]] - [[Edmund Blunden]] - [[Rupert Brooke]] - [[Robert Browning]] - [[Robert Burns]] - [[Thomas Campbell]] - [[Thomas Campion]] - [[G. K. Chesterton]] - [[Hartley Coleridge]] - [[Robert Conquest]] - [[W. J. Cory]] - [[John Davidson (poet)|John Davidson]] - [[Donald Davie]] - [[C. Day Lewis]] - [[Walter De la Mare]] - [[Ernest Dowson]] - [[Michael Drayton]] - [[Lawrence Durrell]] - [[Jean Elliot]] - [[George Farewell]] - [[James Elroy Flecker]] - [[Thomas Ford (composer)|Thomas Ford]] - [[Roy Fuller]] - [[Robert Graves]] - [[Thomas Gray]] - [[Fulke Greville]] - [[Heath (poet)|Heath]] - [[Reginald Heber]] - [[Felicia Dorothea Hemans]] - [[W. E. Henley]] - [[George Herbert]] - [[Ralph Hodgson]] - [[Thomas Hood]] - [[Teresa Hooley]] - [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]] - [[A. E. Housman]] - [[Henry Howard]] - [[T. E. Hulme]] - [[Leigh Hunt]] - [[Elizabeth Jennings]] - [[Samuel Johnson]] - [[John Keats]] - [[Henry King]] - [[Charles Kingsley]] - [[Rudyard Kipling]] - [[Philip Larkin]] - [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]] - [[John Lydgate]] - [[H. F. Lyte]] - [[Louis MacNeice]] - [[Andrew Marvell]] - [[John Masefield]] - [[Alice Meynell]] - [[Harold Monro]] - [[William Morris]] - [[Edwin Muir]] - [[Henry Newbolt]] - [[Alfred Noyes]] - [[Wilfred Owen]] - [[Thomas Love Peacock]] - [[George Peele]] - [[Alexander Pope]] - [[Frederic Prokosch]] - [[Walter Ralegh]] - [[John Crowe Ransom]] - [[Christina Rossetti]] - [[Siegfried Sassoon]] - [[John Skelton]] - [[Robert Southey]] - [[Edmund Spenser]] - [[Sir John Squire]] - [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] - [[Sir John Suckling]] - [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]] - [[George Szirtes]] - [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson]] - [[Dylan Thomas]] - [[Edward Thomas]] - [[R. S. Thomas]] - [[Francis Thompson]] - [[Anthony Thwaite]] - [[Chidiock Tichborne]] - [[Aurelian Townsend]] - [[W. J. Turner]] - [[Oscar Wilde]] - [[John Wilmot, Lord Rochester]] - [[Roger Woddis]] - [[Charles Wolfe]] - [[William Wordsworth]] - [[W. B. Yeats]] - [[Andrew Young (poet)|Andrew Young]]
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* Amis, Martin. ''Experience: A Memoir''. Vintage, 2001. ISBN 0375726837
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* Bradford, Richard. ''Lucky Him: The Life of Kingsley Amis''. Peter Owen Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0720611172
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* Fussell, Paul. ''The Anti-Egotist: Kingsley Amis, Man of Letters''. Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0195087364
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* Howard, Elizabeth Jane. ''Slipstream''. Pan, 2003. ISBN 0330484052
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* Leader, Zachary. ''The Life of Kingsley Amis''. Jonathan Cape, 2006. ISBN 0224062271
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==
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*[http://www.williams.edu/English/faculty/rbell/AmisIntro.html "Kingsley Amis in the Great Tradition and in Our Time,"]  by Robert H. Bell, Williams College. Introduction to ''Critical Essays on Kingsley Amis'', ed. Robert H. Bell, New York: G.K. Hall, 1998.
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All links retrieved April 19, 2018.
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*[http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-5,00.html Guardian Books "Author Page"], with profile and links to further articles.
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* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/09/kingsleyamis Kingsley Amis] ''The Guardian'' Author page.
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*[http://www.theparisreview.com/viewinterview.php/prmMID/3772 ''The Paris Review'' interview, with downloadable PDF]
 
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[[Category:Writers and poets]]
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Latest revision as of 15:11, 19 April 2018


Sir Kingsley William Amis (April 16, 1922 – October 22, 1995) was an English poet, academic, novelist, and teacher. Amis was considered an anti-authority revolutionary, as well as one of the "angry young men" of the 1950s (though he denied his participation). In time some came to consider him a reactionary. His early struggle with money and education instilled in Amis the desire to create his destiny and make his life more than what others thought it could be.

He was a highly intelligent and witty man whose writings reflect his deep awareness of the complexities of human nature. His works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II in 1945. Amis penned over 20 novels, published three collections of poetry, and wrote short stories and scripts for radio and television. His later writings showed his maturity as a critic and consisted mainly of books concerned with purely social and literary criticism. Amis is also known for the work of his son, Martin Amis, a famous British writer.

Biography

Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, South London, as the only son of a business man. Not much is recorded of Kingsley Amis childhood, but he completed his secondary education and went on to pursue higher education at the City of London School and St. John's College, Oxford. It was while studying at Oxford that he met Philip Larkin. The two became friends and that friendship would prove to be one of the most important of his life. During his time at Oxford, Amis was made aware of his lower-middle-class origins and he sought to better his education and made goals for improving his life. He spent a brief time away from Oxford to serve his country during World War II in the Royal Corps of Signals. Amis was determined to finish college and as soon as his service and the war were over, he returned to Oxford and graduated in 1947. That same year Amis published his first book of poetry, Bright November, but it was largely overlooked and received no critical acclaim.

In 1948, Amis fell in love with bright and sunny 17-year-old Hilary Bardwell. He lovingly called her "Hills" and the couple began their marriage with the birth of their son Martin in 1949. Martin would grow up to be a famous author himself and even wrote an autobiographical account of his life as Amis son. He called it Experience; it was a very straightforward novel written with a similar humor as his father and many compared the quality of his descriptions to those of Charles Dickens.

I slept in a drawer and had my baths in an outdoor sink. My nappies bore triangular singe marks where they had been dried on the fireguard. It was tough. My father's dinner would often consist of the contents of the doggybag that my mother brought back from the cinema café (the Tivoli) where she worked.

Martin Amis, Experience

Amis, now needing to support a growing family, went on to work as an English lecturer at the University of Wales Swansea (1948–1961), and followed that with teaching at Cambridge (1961–1963), where he distinguished himself as a fellow of Peterhouse. Although money was tight things changed for the better with the publication of Amis' first novel, Lucky Jim. The novel was published in 1954 and became an immediate success in the literary world. Lucky Jim was an innovative work for several reasons, foremost among them is the fact that Amis featured a simple and ordinary man as an anti-hero. The novel centers around Jim Dixon, a junior university teacher who consistently faces problems with his girlfriend and his supervising professor. He tries to reconcile himself to his occupation, only to realize that he despises anything dealing with the pretensions of "academic life." Constantly spurred on by ambition for a better place in life, Jim finds himself unable to break the bonds of social classes and he finds himself in constant peril of losing his job. The story was considered exemplary of the 1950s era in Britain. It went on to win the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. During his time of popularity, Amis was reported to have had associations with the group of writers who called themselves the Angry Young Men.

Although Amis found great success as a novelist, he did not stop writing poetry. He joined the poetic group, The Movement, which consisted of his dear friend Philip Larkin, as well as Robert Conquest and Elizabeth Jennings. The group helped to encourage Amis' poetry and he published his second collection of poems, A Frame of Mind in 1953, followed by Poems: Fantasy Portraits in 1954. Both Amis and Larkin shared a passion for jazz and politics. Amis was a noted atheist and, as a young man, a vocal member of the Communist Party. His stint with Communism began to wane when the USSR invaded Hungary in 1956. After the events of 1956 Amis became very anti-communist and very conservative. He inserted his newfound ideals in his writings, beginning with his essay, "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967). These same sentiments can be felt in his later novel Russian Hide and Seek (1980).

Later life

As Amis political life turned conservative, his personal life was anything but. He ended his 15–year marriage to Hilary Bardwell when he left her for fellow novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard in 1965. Amis married Jane (as she was called), but was given a taste of his own medicine when she walked out on him in 1983, declaring that he was impossible to live with. The couple had one daughter. Amis made it no secret that he regretted leaving Hilary. In an odd and extraordinary turn of events, Amis arranged to live with Hilary, their two children, Martin and Philip, as well as her new husband. Hilary and her husband Alistair had one son together, James. The group lived together for the next 15 years until Amis death in 1995. Hilary nursed Amis during his last years, caring for all of his needs.

In 1990, Amis was knighted and according to his son Martin he got it partly for being "audibly and visibly right-wing, or conservative/monarchist." Martin Amis in his memoir, Experience, wrote of losing his father: "The intercessory figure, the father, the man who stands between the son and death, is no longer here; and it won't ever be the same. He is missing. But I know it is common; all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. My father lost his father, and my children will lose theirs, and their children (this is immensely onerous to contemplate) will lose theirs."

Writing Career

You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.

Kingsley Amis, from Lucky Jim, 1954


Science Fiction

In 1960, Kingsley Amis wrote New Maps of Hell and his critical interest in the science fiction genre began. It was in this novel that one of Amis most popular phrases, "comic inferno" was coined. The phrase describes a humorous dystopia (a society characterized by human misery and squalor). Amis differed from other writers in his depiction of such a world because of such humor. In particular, Amis found inspiration in the works of Frederick Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth, and Robert Sheckley. His next try at science fiction was a production of a popular anthology series, Spectrum I-IV. Amis found his main source of inspiration in the 1950s magazine, Astounding Science Fiction. He co-wrote the series with Robert Conquest, a prominent Sovietologist. Shortly after the successful series, Amis wrote three novels in quick succession, The Alteration, which is an alternate history novel set in a futuristic Britain where the Reformation never took place; Russian Hide-and-Seek, another alternate history that explores a world where Russia conquered Britain at the end of World War II; and finally, the very popular supernatural-horror novel The Green Man, which was eventually adapted by the BBC for television.

Amis was a great conversationalist, and he loved to discuss ideas and stories with others. One such event transpired with C. S. Lewis and Brian Aldiss in Lewis's Cambridge office in 1962. The three maintain a purely science-fiction dialogue and the conversation was recorded. Later, Lewis transcribed the event and titled it "Unreal Estates" and put it in one of his final collections, On Stories.

James Bond

In the 1960s, Kingsley Amis broke from his science-fiction work when he began writing for the popular James Bond series created by Ian Fleming. Amis did much of this writing without credit as he worked under a pseudonym, sometimes with no credit at all. In 1965, Amis wrote a Bond novel under his own name. The novel, The James Bond Dossier was very successful so he wrote another the very same year. The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 was a manual about how to be a sophisticated spy. This spy uses the pseudonym Bill Tanner, Tanner being "M," Bond's Chief of Staff in many of Fleming's Bond novels.

After Fleming's death in 1964, there was a rumor that is was Amis who completed the draft of The Man with the Golden Gun, but in recent years this story was proven false, although Amis did offer suggestions on the improvement of the manuscript.

In 1968, the owners of the James Bond property, Glidrose Publications, desired to continue the publication of the popular series under the pseudonym "Robert Markham." Amis was the very first to write under this name. He produced, Colonel Sun, but that was the last book ever published by "Markham." Colonel Sun, which was very successful, was later adapted as a comic strip and appeared in the Daily Express in 1969. Although Colonel Sun was never made into a Bond film (because of producer problems), it was clearly referenced in 2002's Die Another Day, starring Pierce Brosnan, where the villain was named Colonel Tan-Sun Moon.

The empty room gazed bleakly at Bond. As always, everything was meticulously in its place, the lines of naval prints exactly horizontal on the walls, water-colour materials laid out as if for inspection on the painting-table up against the window. It all had a weirdly artificial, detached air, like part of a museum where the furniture and effects of some historical figure are preserved just as they were in his lifetime.

Kingsley Amis, Colonel Sun

Other works

Amis also produced anthologies like The New Oxford Book of Light (1978) and The Popular Reciter (1978).) The first The Oxford Book of Light Verse was published in 1938 with W.H. Auden selections. Amis' collection—which includes familiar favorites as well as previously unpublished masterpieces—is lighter in heart than Auden's and closer to a modern understanding of the meaning of "light." He also wrote works on drink, columns on food for Harper's and Queen, detective books, critical studies—Rudyard Kipling and His World (1975), Memoirs(1990), The King's English (1998), and mini-essays on the craft of writing well.

His last, unfinished, novel was Black and White, about an attraction between a white homosexual man and a black heterosexual girl.

Awards

In addition to the Somerset Maugham Award he won for Lucky Jim, in 1983 a jury commissioned by the British Book Marketing Council declared Take a Girl Like You one of the dozen best novels written in English since 1945. In 1986, Amis won the Booker Prize for The Old Devils. He also won the Campbell Award for the year's best science-fiction with The Alteration in 1976.

His son, Martin Amis, was also awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, in addition to the National Book League Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Bibliography

1947 Amis's first collection of poems, Bright November
1953 A Frame of Mind
1954 Poems: Fantasy Portraits.
1954 Lucky Jim, Amis' first novel ISBN 0142180149
1955 That Uncertain Feeling
1956 A Case of Samples: Poems 1946-1956.
1957 Socialism and the Intellectuals. A Fabian Society pamphlet
1958 I Like it Here
1960 Take A Girl Like You ISBN 0140018484
1960 New Maps of Hell ISBN 0405063210
1960 Hemingway in Space (short story), Punch magazine Dec 1960
1962 My Enemy's Enemy ISBN 0575008164
1962 The Evans County
1963 One Fat Englishman ISBN 0671671197
1965 The Egyptologists (with Robert Conquest).
1965 The James Bond Dossier ISBN 9997512286
1965 The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007, under the pseudonym "Bill Tanner"
1966 The Anti-Death League ISBN 014002803X
1968 Colonel Sun, a James Bond novel, under the pseudonym "Robert Markham." ISBN 101845761758
1968 I Want It Now
1969 The Green Man ISBN 0897332202
1970 What Became of Jane Austen and Other Questions
1971 Girl, 20
1972 On Drink ISBN 0224007971
1973 The Riverside Villas Murders ISBN 0151777209
1974 Ending Up ISBN 0151287961
1974 Rudyard Kipling and his World
1976 The Alteration ISBN 0881844322
1978 Jake's Thing ISBN 0140050965
1979 Collected Poems 1944-78
1980 Russian Hide-and-Seek ISBN 0091420504
1980 Collected Short Stories
1983 Every Day Drinking
1984 How's Your Glass?
1984 Stanley and the Women
1986 The Old Devils ISBN 0060971460
1988 Difficulties With Girls
1990 The Folks That Live on the Hill
1990 The Amis Collection
1991 Memoirs ISBN 0671749099
1991 Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories
1992 The Russian Girl ISBN 0670853291
1994 The semi-autobiographical You Can't Do Both ISBN 0091803195
1995 The Biographer's Moustache ISBN 0002253305
1997 The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage ISBN 0312186010
2001 The Letters of Kingsley Amis, Edited by Zachary Leader ISBN 0786867574

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Amis, Martin. Experience: A Memoir. Vintage, 2001. ISBN 0375726837
  • Bradford, Richard. Lucky Him: The Life of Kingsley Amis. Peter Owen Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0720611172
  • Fussell, Paul. The Anti-Egotist: Kingsley Amis, Man of Letters. Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0195087364
  • Howard, Elizabeth Jane. Slipstream. Pan, 2003. ISBN 0330484052
  • Leader, Zachary. The Life of Kingsley Amis. Jonathan Cape, 2006. ISBN 0224062271

External links

All links retrieved April 19, 2018.


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