Roy Fuller: A Tribute

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

The name of Roy Fuller might well be used as a test to assess claims to
familiarity with 20th-century British literature. The phonies will not
have heard of him; the reasonably competent will know of him as a poet
but will probably not be able to name a poem or even a volume; the true
cognoscenti will recognize a quietly distinguished and versatile writer
of poems, novels, thrillers, autobiographical memoirs, and poetic
criticism.

Fuller died in 1992, when the present book, intended as a tribute to a
living writer, was in the process of preparation. Sadly, it now becomes
a memorial—but, happily, it is a very good one. It contains
appropriate poetic tributes by British poets like Gavin Ewart and
Anthony Thwaite, and one by the Canadian poet George Johnston, and the
essays constitute a thorough survey of Fuller’s writings and are of an
unusually high standard. Aspects of his poetry are expertly considered
by, among others, Bernard Bergonzi, Donald E. Stanford, and Christopher
Levenson. Allan Austin surveys the novels and Barbara Gabriel the
detective fiction, while Peter Levi discusses his lectures as Professor
of Poetry at Oxford, and George Woodcock the memoirs; A.T. Tolley (who
edited the whole) reports on Fuller’s notebooks.

As someone who belonged among the merely competent when I first
encountered the volume, I have been stimulated by its contents to aspire
toward the higher stage of initiation. This is literary criticism that
really helps the genuinely interested reader. I can think of no better
entrée into Fuller’s work. Moreover, it is a book that would provide
an excellent general introduction to poetry in England in the past six
decades.

At a time when too much literary criticism is obfuscating, here is
genuine illumination. Fuller was a highly talented, unostentatious,
decent man, and the contributions in this book earn the same adjectives.
Everyone involved deserves congratulations.