William Empson

William Empson (1906-1984), English poet and major literary critic of the 1930s. Empson was born in Yorkshire and educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Initially a brilliant mathematician, he was allowed to switch to studying English under I. A. Richards, until a minor scandal prevented him from taking up a fellowship, contraceptives having been found in his room. In 1930, aged only 24, he published Seven Types of Ambiguity, an astonishingly influential text which studied in minute and appreciative detail the various meanings and effects of English poetry. Empson subsequently taught in China and Japan before becoming Professor of English at Sheffield University.

Empson's poetry shows the same intellectual rigour as his criticism, as well as a sophisticated wit. Poems was published in 1935; a second volume, The Gathering Storm, followed in 1940. The poems are complex and questioning; although at first sight they appear overintellectual and difficult, using arguments and metaphors drawn from disciplines such as physics and mathematics, there is a humane passion behind their enquiries. Empson's poetry was not immediately valued, since his work lacked the political engagement evident in the work of W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Louis MacNeice; but T. S. Eliot admired their elegance and logic, as did Philip Larkin and other poets of the 1950s. Collected Poems appeared in 1955, signalling the end of Empson's career as a poet. His other works include Some Versions of Pastoral (1935), Milton's God (1961), and Using Biography (1984).