Kingsley Amis Biography and List of Works

Novelist, poet, critic, and teacher, father of the writer Martin Amis, generally grouped among the "angry young men" in the 1950s, though he denied the affiliation. Amis' ascent from the obscurity of lower-middle-class London was largely self-willed. He became a man of outrageous wit and genius, and gained reputation as a "supreme clubman, boozer and blimp." A radical in his young adulthood, Amis was later known for his conservative critique of contemporary life and manners.

"'You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescense, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.'"
(from Lucky Jim, 1954)

Kingsley Amis was born in London as the only son of a business clerk. He was educated at the City of London School and St. John's College, Oxford. After service in the army with the Royal Corps of Signals Amis completed his university studies and worked as a lecturer in English at the University College of Swansea (1948-61) and in Cambridge (1961-63).

In 1947 Amis published his first collection of poems, BRIGHT NOVEMBER. It was followed by A FRAME OF MIND (1953), POEMS: FANTASY PORTRAITS (1954) and A CASE OF SAMPLES: POEMS 1946-1956 (1956). During this time Amis was a member of the literary group The Movement, whose members included Robert Conquest, Elisabeth Jennings and Philip Larkin. As a novelist Amis made his debut with LUCKY JIM (1954), which was very successful. The comic main character also appeared in novels THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING (1956) and I LIKE IT HERE (1958), a xenophobic novel set in Portugal.

After the death of Ian Fleming in 1964 Amis wrote a James Bond adventure, COLONEL SUN (1968). His study of the world famous spy appeared under the title THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER (1965). In the story Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China collaborates with an ex-Nazi plan to open the eastern Mediterranean for Chinese influence and continue to the whole Arab world and Africa. Also M is kidnapped.

"The empty room gazed bleakly at Bond. As always, everything was meticulously in its place, the lines of naval prints exactly horizontal on the walls, water-colour materials laid out as if for inspection on the painting-table up against the window. It all had a weirdly artificial, detached air, like part of a museum where the furniture and effects of some historical figure are preserved just as they were in his lifetime."
(from Colonel Sun)

Amis's anti-intellectual stance is also reflected in such anthologies as THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF LIGHT VERSE (1978) and THE POPULAR RECITER (1978). Among his other works are books on drink, columns on food for Harper's and Queen, detective books, critical study - RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD (1975), MEMOIRS (1990), THE KING'S ENGLISH (1998), and mini-essays on the craft of writing well.

'I don't really like reading anything. I don't think reading is an experience.'
'But what about people reading you? Isn't that an experience?' Jenny felt horrible as she used the word.
'I don't really care about reading me, I'm a writer,' said Vera Selig...'
(from Difficulties with Girls, 1988)

In the 1980s Amis wrote the Booker Prize winning novel THE OLD DEVILS (1986), which tells the story of a group of retired friends and their wives, whose lives revolve around social drinking, and the effect on them of the reappearance of Alun Weaver, a professionally Welsh literary pundit. Semi-autobiographical YOU CAN'T DO BOTH (1994) was set between the wars, and told the story of Robin Davies, who progresses from south London suburbia, through Oxford, and on to a lectureship in a provincial university.

Amis had three children from his first marriage to Hilary Bardwell. He was married from 1965 to 1983 to the novelist Elisabeth Jane Howard. Amis was knighted in 1990. He died in 1995 at the age of 73 with over 20 novels to his credit, plus dozens of volumes of poetry, stories, collections of essays, and criticism.

The popular notion of Amis as a mean spirited reactionary has been criticized by Paul Fussell in his monograph The Anti-Egotist. Fussell sees the author as one of the great literary moralists of this century. A "cultural democrat," Amis values honesty, civility, and lack of pretence. The only novelist Amis admitted reading (other than his son Martin), was George McDonald Frazer, author of the Flashman series. Among the author's life long friends was the poet Philip Larkin, whom Amis befriended because they were "savagely uninterested in the same things."

Lucky Jim (1954) - central character is the antihero Jim Dixon, a junior faculty member at a small university, who faces one disaster after another with his girlfriend and professor. Dixon's job is in constant danger, often for good reason. He despises the pretensions of academic life, but his ambitious plans to improve his situation are fruitless, because the class distinctions are unbreakable. - see also Odili from Chunua Achebe's novel A Man of the People (1966)

Martin Amis (1949-) - studied English at Exeter College, worked for the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesmen, and from the 1980s special writer for the Observer. Amis published his first novel The Rache Papers in 1973. Other works: Dead Babies (1975), Success (1978), My Oxford (1977, with A. Thwaite), Other People (1981), Invasion of the Space Invaders (1982), Money (1984), The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986), Einstein's Monsters (1987), London Fields (1989), Time's Arrow (1991), Two Stories (1994), The Information (1995), and Night Train (1997). In his memoir Experience (2000) Amis draws a moving and sharp portrait of his father. "... I always knew I would have to commemorate him. He was a writer and I am a writer, it feels like a duty to describe our case - a literary curiosity which is also just another instance of father and son."

For further reading: Kingsley Amis: A Reference Guide by Dale Selwak (1978); Kingsley Amis: In Life and Letters, ed. by Dale Selwak (1991); Kingsley Amis by Dale Selwak (1992), Understanding Kingsley Amis by Merritt Moseley (1993); The Anti-Egotist by Paul Fussell (1994); Kingsley Amis by Eric Jacobs (1998); Critical Essays on Kingsley Amis, ed. by Robert H. Bell (1998) Kingsley Amis by William E. Laskowski (1998); Experience by Martin Amis (2000) - See also: Allan Sillitoe, labelled also among "angry young men" ; Edmund Crispin, and Philip Larkin, who were Kingsley Amis's friend during his Oxford years.

A FRAME OF MIND, (1953)
POEMS: FANTASY PORTRAITS, (1954)
LUCKY JIM, (1954)
THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING, (1955)
A CASE OF SAMPLES: POEMS, (1946)
I LIKE IT HERE, (1958)
TAKE A GIRL LIKE YOU, (1960)
NEW MAPS OF HELL, (1960)
ed.: SPECTRUM, (1961)
MY ENEMY'S ENEMY, (1962)
THE EVANS COUNTY, (1962)
ONE FAT ENGLISMAN, (1963)
THE EGYPTOLOGIST, (1965)
THE JAMES BOND DOSSIER, (1965)
THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE, (1966)
A LOOK AROUND THE ESTATE, (1967)
I WANT IT NOW, (1968)
COLONEL SUN, (1968)
THE GREEN MAN, (1969)
WHAT BECAME OF JANE AUSTEN AND OTHER QESTIONS, (1970)
GIRL, 20, (1971)
ON DRINK, (1972)
ed.: G.K. Chesterton's SELECTED STORIES, (1972)
ed.: TENNYSON'S POEMS, (1973)
THE RIVERSIDE VILLAS MURDERS, (1973)
ENDING UP, (1974)
RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD, (1975)
THE ALTERATION, (1976)
ed.: HAROLD'S YEARS, (1977)
ed.: THE FABER POPULAR RECITER, (1978)
ed.: THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF LIGHT VERSE, (1978)
JAKE'S THING, (1978)
COLLECTED POEMS, (1944)
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES, (1980)
RUSSIAN HIDE AND SEEK, (1980)
ed.: THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION, (1981)
EVERY DAY DRINKING, (1983)
HOW'S YOUR GLASS?, (1984)
STANLEY AND THE WOMEN, (1984)
THE OLD DEVILS, (1986)
THE GREAT BRITISH SONGBOOK, (1986)
DIFFICULTIES WITH GIRLS, (1988)
THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL, (1990)
THE AMIS COLLECTION, (1990)
MEMOIRS, (1991)
MR BARRETT'S SECRET AND OTHER STORIES, (1993)
THE RUSSIAN GIRL, (1994)
YOU CAN'T DO BOTH, (1994)
THE KING'S ENGLISH: A GUIDE TO MODERN USAGE, (1998)