High Windows was published by Faber and Faber, London, on 3 June 1974, in a first printing of approximately 6,000 copies priced at £1.50. It was Larkin’s fourth and final collection of poetry (he published no further books of verse before his death in 1985) and contains some of his most famous and most characteristic work. The collection was a bestseller by poetry standards and confirmed Larkin’s position as the most widely read English poet since Betjeman.
The Poems
The collection opens with “To the Sea,” a gentle, nostalgic poem about the continuity of seaside holidays across generations. It closes with “The Explosion,” a moving elegy for miners killed in a pit disaster. Between these bookends, Larkin surveys the territory he had made his own: England, solitude, the approach of death, and the bitter comedy of consciousness.
“This Be The Verse” — “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” — is probably the most quoted poem of the twentieth century. Its three stanzas of catchy, savage vulgarity summarise Larkin’s view of human inheritance with an efficiency that borders on the epigrammatic. “The Old Fools” confronts ageing with a horror that is only partially disguised by the poem’s formal control: “What do they think has happened, the old fools, / To make them like this?”
“Annus Mirabilis” declares, with characteristic irony, that sexual intercourse began “in nineteen sixty-three / (Which was rather late for me).” “The Building” is a long, solemn poem about a hospital — a building to which everyone comes eventually, and from which some do not leave. “Money” and “Posterity” are comic but acidic. The title poem, “High Windows,” moves from a vulgar observation about sexual freedom to an extraordinary final image of nothingness: “Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: / The sun-comprehending glass, / And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”
Collecting High Windows
First edition (1974, Faber and Faber): Approximately 6,000 copies, £1.50.
Identification points:
- Faber and Faber imprint
- “first published in 1974” on copyright page
- Blue cloth binding
- Dust jacket with sky-blue design
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $1,000–$3,000
- Signed first edition: $3,000–$10,000
- Without jacket: $100–$300
Value trajectory: Strong demand. Larkin is the most collected modern English poet, and High Windows is his most famous collection. His death in 1985 and the subsequent controversy over his letters and biography (which revealed his racism, misogyny, and alcoholism) have not diminished collector interest — if anything, the controversy has increased the public’s fascination with the man behind the poems. Signed copies are extremely valuable; Larkin was a reluctant signer.
Nothing, and Nowhere, and Endless
Larkin’s poetry achieves its effects through a movement that looks simple but is technically masterful: a poem begins with a casual, even colloquial observation, then deepens through its middle stanzas, and arrives at a final image or phrase that transforms everything that came before. The title poem is the supreme example — from sexual gossip to the infinite blue. This structural pattern, repeated across dozens of poems, gives Larkin’s work its cumulative power. He is a poet of the ordinary who repeatedly discovers, within the ordinary, something that cannot be named.