Volume 21, Number 21 & 22 · January 23, 1975
Incomparable Empson
By Michael Wood
William Empson: The Man and His Work
edited by Roma Gill
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 244 pp., $16.50
William Empson, poet, critic, professor, and lifelong mauvais sujet of English studies, was born in Yorkshire in 1906, studied with I. A. Richards in Cambridge, taught for longish spells in Japan and China, and from 1953 until his retirement in 1971 held the Chair of English Literature at Sheffield University. Roma Gill's collection of essays, poems, and memories is about Empson, as its subtitle suggests; but it is also in honor of Empson, one of those gold watches of academe that are sometimes handed out at the end of a distinguished teaching career. It is odd to find Empson in such a situation; it doesn't really suit the determined, unsubdued youth of his mind, what Karl Miller calls the velocity of his writing.
Review, 5823 words
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