Empson's Epistolary Sociability and theTimes Literary Supplement

Abstract

JOHN HAFFENDEN, his editor and biographer, says that William Empson wrote letters ‘for two primary and proper purposes: for conversation and for literary-critical controversion. Often the two purposes would amount to the same thing’.1 The acuity, verve, and self-awareness with which Empson practised this dual art – folding into each other the sociable and the critical – is, in my view, what elevates and distinguishes his criticism from the common way in which intellectual prose can have a sociable aspect, and this is especially the case with his critical correspondence. My attention here is on Empson's letters to the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, where the ethos of the magazine's correspondence co-operated with Empson's instincts to produce memorable and important illustrations of his practices and personality. Now, thanks largely to Haffenden, Empson's letters, as well as his criticism and the events of his life, have been brilliantly collected and studied; and the Times Literary Supplement, notably through the work of Derwent May, Jeremy Treglown, and Deborah McVea, has been the subject of official historical treatment and scholarly analysis, and made into a meticulous digital archive. So it seems opportune to consider, with these resources, the epistolary relationship between Empson and the TLS, and their influences upon each other.