Kenneth Allott is better known as a literary critic and scholar than as a poet. His poetry has attracted comparatively little notice, except from a few isolated quarters, and has as yet established for itself only a minor place in the history of English poetry in the 1930s. Rarely has it been accorded the admiration it deserves. But Allott's poetry is too interesting and important to be viewed only as representative of a particular generation and period. While it is true that much of it does share in the characteristics and preoccupations of its time, Allott's poetic output reveals a considerable individual talent.

Kenneth Allott was born in Glamorgan but spent much of his childhood and youth in Cumberland. He was educated at various schools and at the universities of Durham (where he took first-class honors in English) and of Oxford, where he obtained a B. Litt. for...