John Haffenden opens the proceedings with a long extract from one of Empson's letters and goes on to provide a leisurely commentary on it, so, even if you hadn't noticed the bulk of the book, you'd sense right away that you were in for the long haul. At the end of this first instalment the poet is still only 33 years old and has another 44 years to go; no doubt they will be less action-packed, more sedate - containable, one hopes, in only one more volume. Yet although Haffenden does, here and there, provide copious information on matters of rather marginal interest, his book justifies its length by supplying a mass of relevant detail on the life of a man who would be extraordinary even if one left out of account his achievements as poet and critic.

LRB 19 May 2005 | PDF Download