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Brunette Coleman was a pseudonym used by the poet and writer Philip Larkin (1922–1985). In 1943, towards the end of his time as an undergraduate at St John's College, Oxford, he wrote several works of fiction, verse and critical commentary under that name. The style he adopted parodies that of popular writers of contemporary girls' school fiction, but the extent of the stories' homoerotic content suggests they were written primarily for adult male titillation. The Coleman oeuvre consists of a completed novella, ''Trouble at Willow Gables'', set in a girls' boarding school; an incomplete sequel, ''Michaelmas Term at St Brides'', set in a women's college at Oxford; seven short poems with a girls' school ambience; a fragment of pseudo-autobiography; and a critical essay purporting to be Coleman's literary apologia. The manuscripts were stored in the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, where Larkin was chief librarian between 1955 and 1985. Their existence was revealed to the public when Larkin's ''Selected Letters'' and Andrew Motion's biography were published in 1992 and 1993 respectively. The Coleman works themselves were finally published, with other Larkin drafts and oddments, in 2002. Larkin's Oxford years were for him a period of confused sexuality and limited literary output. The adoption of a female persona released him from his creative inhibitions; the three years following the Coleman phase saw the publication, under Larkin's own name, of two novels and his first poetry collection. Thereafter his career as a prose writer declined, and despite several attempts he completed no further novels. Critical reaction to the publication of the Coleman material was divided between those who saw no value in these juvenilia, and those who considered that they cast useful light on the study of the mature Larkin. ==Origins== In October 1940 Philip Larkin began studying English at St John's College, Oxford. He expected to be called up for wartime military service, but in January 1942 he learned that because of his poor eyesight he had failed his army medical examination and was thus able to remain at Oxford.〔Motion, p. 72〕 A prolific writer since childhood, Larkin's primary ambition as an undergraduate was to be a novelist rather than a poet.〔Booth, p. vii〕 As well as the articles and poems that he published in ''Cherwell'' and ''Oxford Poetry'', he wrote additional material that he kept to himself, or shared only with a few close friends.〔Motion, p. 85〕 Among these private unpublished works were fragments of semi-autobiographical stories exploring homosexual relationships among groups of undergraduates. According to Larkin's biographer Andrew Motion these writings, while of no literary value, give an indication of Larkin's confused sexuality at that time, and his growing distaste for what he terms "this buggery business".〔Motion, pp. 64–65〕 From 1942 the character of much of Larkin's "secret" writing changed, as a result of his friendship with a fellow undergraduate from St John's, Kingsley Amis, who arrived at the university that summer.〔Motion, pp. 53–54〕 Amis, a much more confident and assertive character than Larkin, disguised his serious concerns behind a facade of jokes and comic ironies. Larkin soon adopted that style as his own, joining with Amis in composing obscene rhymes and parodies of the Romantic poets they were required to study.〔Motion, p. 58〕 In time they extended their efforts to soft-porn fantasies in which, typically, "girls roll() around together twanging elastic and straps".〔Motion, pp. 86–87〕 After Amis's departure for the army in early 1943, Larkin made his first attempt at writing from a specifically feminine perspective in a story called "An Incident in the English Camp", which he subtitled "A Thoroughly Unhealthy Story". Lacking any salacious content despite its subtitle, the work is written in a pastiche of sentimental women's magazine prose. It depicts an undergraduate girl's parting from her soldier lover, and ends: "She walked in exaltation through the black streets, her heart glowing like a coal with deep love".〔Booth, pp. viii–ix〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brunette Coleman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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