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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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 23 November 2024.]
