Tony Harrison

Ian Copestake (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

Born 30 Apr 1937
Activity 1964-ongoing

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist
Poet
Translator

Resources

Harrison's Works

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Tony Harrison's writing is characterised by an impassioned engagement with contradictions generated by his upbringing, education and familial relations. Born into a working-class family in Leeds, he attended Leeds Grammar School as a Scholarship Boy, and went on to study Classics at Leeds University. His early career was as a peripatetic academic and teacher. He began to publish poetry in the mid-sixties, his first poems appearing in a collection entitled

Earthworks

(1964) during a period when he was lecturing in Nigeria (1962-66). Although a self-consciously radical and proletarian writer whose political sympathies lie firmly with the class and community of his birth, he chose not to refuse conventional verse forms but instead embraced the sonnet and worked throughout his career within…

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2289 words

Citation: Copestake, Ian. "Tony Harrison". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 March 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2004, accessed 24 April 2024.]

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