Editing Kingsley Amis

{{Short description|English author, critic and teacher (1922–1995)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2022}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
|honorific_prefix = [[Sir]]
|name = Kingsley Amis
|honorific_suffix = [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]]
|image = Kingsley_Amis_in_early_middle_age.jpg
|caption = Amis in 1970
|birth_name = Kingsley William Amis
|birth_date = {{Birth date|1922|4|16|df=y}}
|birth_place = [[Clapham]], London, England
|death_date = {{Death date and age|1995|10|22|1922|4|16|df=y}}
|death_place = London, England
|occupation = {{flatlist|
* Novelist
* poet
* critic 
* teacher
}}
|alma_mater = [[St John's College, Oxford]]
|period = 1947–1995
|movement = [[Angry young men]]
|genre = Fiction, [[Prose|fictional prose]]
|spouse = {{ubl|{{marriage|[[Hilary Kilmarnock|Hilary Ann Bardwell]]|1948|1965|end=div}}|{{marriage|[[Elizabeth Jane Howard]]|1965|1983|end=div}}}}
|children = Philip Amis<br />[[Martin Amis]]<br />[[Sally Amis]]
}}
'''Sir Kingsley William Amis''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CBE}} (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English [[novelist]], [[poet]], [[critic]] and [[teacher]]. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of [[social criticism|social]] and [[literary criticism]]. He is best known for [[satirical]] comedies such as ''[[Lucky Jim]]'' (1954), ''One Fat Englishman'' (1963), ''Ending Up'' (1974), ''[[Jake's Thing]]'' (1978) and ''[[The Old Devils]]'' (1986).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Norwich |first=John Julius |title=Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Arts |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0198691372 |location=USA |pages=15}}</ref>

His biographer [[Zachary Leader]] called Amis "the finest English [[comic novel]]ist of the second half of the twentieth century." In 2008, ''[[The Times]]'' ranked him ninth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.<ref>{{Cite news|title=The 50 greatest British writers since 1945|newspaper=[[The Times]]|language=en|url=https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/the-50-greatest-british-writers-since-1945-ws3g69xrf90|access-date=26 September 2020|issn=0140-0460|archive-date=19 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200219025130/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-50-greatest-british-writers-since-1945-ws3g69xrf90|url-status=live}}</ref> He was the father of the novelist [[Martin Amis]].

==Life and career==
Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in [[Clapham]], south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk—"quite an important one, fluent in Spanish and responsible for exporting mustard to South America"—for the mustard manufacturer [[Colman's]] in the [[City of London]],<ref>Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations, Neil Powell, Pan Macmillan, 2012, p. 3</ref> and his wife Rosa Annie (née Lucas).<ref>''Kingsley Amis: Memoirs'', Vintage Classics, 2004, p. 14.</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/portal/2007/06/09/nosplit/ftfamdet109.xml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080501035951/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/portal/2007/06/09/nosplit/ftfamdet109.xml |url-status=dead |archive-date=1 May 2008 |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |title=Family detective |first=Nick |last=Barratt |date=9 June 2007 |access-date=7 May 2010}}.</ref> The Amis grandparents were wealthy. William Amis's father, the glass merchant Joseph James Amis, owned a mansion called Barchester at [[Purley, London|Purley]], then part of [[Surrey]]. Amis considered J. J. Amis—always called "Pater" or "Dadda"—"a jokey, excitable, silly little man", whom he "disliked and was repelled by".<ref name="Memoirs 2004, pp. 1–5">''Memoirs'' (2004), pp. 1–5.</ref>

His wife Julia "was a large, dreadful, hairy-faced creature ... whom [Amis] loathed and feared". His mother's parents lived at [[Camberwell]]. Her father George was an enthusiastic collector of books and Baptist chapel organist who was employed at a Brixton gentleman's outfitters as a tailor's assistant<ref name="Amis 2012, p. 5">Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations, Neil Powell, Pan Macmillan, 2012, p. 5</ref> and was "the only grandparent [Amis] cared for". Amis hoped to inherit much of his grandfather's library, but his grandmother Jemima—whom Amis already disliked for her habit of mocking her husband when he read his favourite passages to Amis, making "faces and gestures at him while his head was lowered to the page"<ref name="Amis 2012, p. 5"/>—permitted him to take only five volumes, on condition he wrote "from his grandfather's collection" on the flyleaf of each.<ref name="Memoirs 2004, pp. 1–5"/>

Amis was raised at [[Norbury]]—in his later estimation "not really a place. It's an expression on a map ... really I should say I came from [[Norbury station]]."<ref>''Bookmark'', BBC TV, "Kingsley Amis: The Memoirs".</ref> Having been educated first at St Hilda's, an "undistinguished, long-vanished local school ... an independent girls' school of the kind which also took small boys, before they became pubescent and dangerous", he then moved to nearby Norbury College.<ref>Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations, Neil Powell, Pan Macmillan, 2012, pp. 4, 9–10</ref>

In 1940, the Amises moved to [[Berkhamsted]], [[Hertfordshire]], and Amis (like his father before him) won a scholarship to the [[City of London School]].<ref>''Memoirs'' (2004), pp. xvi and 14.</ref> In April 1941, after his first year, he was admitted on a scholarship to [[St John's College, Oxford]], where he read English. There he met [[Philip Larkin]], with whom he formed the most important friendship of his life.<ref name="Leader 2006, p. 108">Leader (2006), p. 108,</ref>

In June 1941, Amis joined the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]].<ref name="Leader 2006, p. 108"/> He broke with communism in 1956, in view of [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s denunciation of [[Joseph Stalin]] in his speech "[[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences]]".<ref>Martin Amis (2002).</ref> In July 1942, he was called up for national service and served in the [[Royal Corps of Signals]]. He returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sillery |first1=A. |last2=Sillery |first2=V. |title=St. John's College Biographical Register 1919-1975 |volume=3 |publisher=Oxford: St. John’s College |year=1975 |page=170}}</ref> Although he worked hard and earned a first in English in 1947, he had decided by then to give much of his time to writing.

In 1946 he met [[Hilary Kilmarnock|Hilary Bardwell]]. They married in 1948 after she became pregnant with their first child, Philip. Amis initially arranged for her to have a back-street [[abortion]], but changed his mind, fearing for her safety. He was a [[lecturer]] in English at the [[University College of Swansea]] from 1949 to 1961.<ref>Leader, 2006, p. 452.</ref> Two other children followed: [[Martin Amis|Martin]]<ref>"Sir Kingsley Amis Dies; British Novelist and Poet", ''[[The Washington Post]]'', 23 October 1995; Leader, 2006, p. 1.</ref> in August 1949 and Sally in January 1954.

Days after Sally's birth, Amis's first novel, ''[[Lucky Jim]]'', was published to great acclaim. Critics felt it had caught the flavour of Britain in the 1950s and ushered in a new style of fiction.<ref>Malcolm Bradbury, 1989, p. 205; Ritchie, 1988, p. 64.</ref> By 1972, its impressive sales in Britain had been matched by 1.25 million paperback copies sold in the United States. It was translated into 20 languages, including Polish, [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], Korean, and Serbo-Croat.<ref>Jacobs, 1995, p. 162.</ref> The novel won the [[Somerset Maugham Award]] for fiction and Amis became one of the writers known as the [[Angry Young Men]]. ''Lucky Jim'' was among the first British [[campus novel]]s,{{citation needed|date=August 2021}} setting a precedent for later generations of writers such as [[Malcolm Bradbury]], [[David Lodge (author)|David Lodge]], [[Tom Sharpe]] and [[Howard Jacobson]]. As a poet, Amis was associated with [[The Movement (literature)|The Movement]].

In 1958–1959 Amis made the first of two visits to the United States, as a visiting fellow in creative writing at [[Princeton University]] and a visiting lecturer at other northeastern universities. On returning to Britain, he fell into a rut, and he began looking for another post. After 13 years at Swansea, Amis became a fellow of [[Peterhouse, Cambridge]], in 1961, but regretted the move within a year, finding Cambridge an academic and social disappointment. He resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca, although he actually moved no further than London.<ref>''Memoirs'', "Cambridge".</ref><ref>Bradford, Ch. 10.</ref>

In 1963, Hilary discovered that Amis was having an affair with the novelist [[Elizabeth Jane Howard]]. Hilary and Amis separated in August and he went to live with Howard, divorcing Hilary and marrying Howard in 1965. In 1968 he moved with Howard to [[Lemmons]], a house in Barnet, north London. She and Amis divorced in 1983.

In his last years, Amis shared a house with Hilary and her third husband, [[Alastair Boyd, 7th Baron Kilmarnock]]. Martin's memoir ''[[Experience (book)|Experience]]'' contains much about the life, charm and decline of his father.

Amis was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] in 1990. In August 1995 he fell, following a suspected stroke. After apparently recovering, he worsened and died on 22 October 1995 at [[St Pancras Hospital]], London.<ref>"Sir Kingsley Amis Dies; British Novelist and Poet", ''Washington Post'', 23 October 1995.</ref><ref>Bradford, Ch 23.</ref> He was cremated and his ashes laid to rest at [[Golders Green Crematorium]].

==Literary work==
{{multiple issues|section=yes|
{{Unreferenced section|date=June 2012}}{{original research|date=October 2017}}
}}
Amis is widely known as a comic novelist of life in mid- to late-20th-century Britain, but his literary work covered many genres: poetry, essays, criticism, short stories, food and drink, anthologies, and several novels in genres such as science fiction and mystery. His career initially developed inversely to that of his close friend [[Philip Larkin]]. Before becoming known as a poet, Larkin had published two novels; Amis originally sought to be a poet and turned to novels only after publishing several volumes of verse. He continued throughout his career to write poetry in a straightforward, accessible style that often masks a nuance of thought.

Amis's first novel, ''Lucky Jim'' (1954), satirises the highbrow academic set of an unnamed university through the eyes of a struggling young lecturer of history. It was widely perceived as part of the [[Angry Young Men]] movement of the 1950s, in reacting against the stultification of conventional British life, although Amis never encouraged this interpretation. Amis's other 1950s and early 1960s novels likewise depict contemporary situations drawn from his experience.

''[[That Uncertain Feeling (novel)|That Uncertain Feeling]]'' (1955) features a young provincial librarian (perhaps with an eye to Larkin working as a librarian in Hull) and his temptation to adultery. ''I Like It Here'' (1958) takes a contemptuous view of "abroad" after Amis's own travels on the Continent with a young family. ''[[Take a Girl Like You]]'' (1960) steps away from the immediately autobiographical but remains grounded in the concerns of sex and love in ordinary modern life, tracing a young schoolmaster's courtship and ultimate seduction of the heroine.

With ''[[The Anti-Death League]]'' (1966), Amis begins to show some of the experimentation—in content, if not style—that marked much of his work in the 1960s and 1970s. His departure from the strict realism of his early comedic novels is not as abrupt as it might first appear. He had been avidly reading science fiction since he was a boy and developed that interest in the Christian Gauss Lectures of 1958 while visiting [[Princeton University]]. These were published that year as ''New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction'', giving a serious yet light-handed treatment of what the genre had to say about man and society.

Amis was especially keen on the [[dystopian]] works of [[Frederik Pohl]] and [[C. M. Kornbluth]] and, in ''New Maps of Hell'', coined the term "comic inferno" to describe a type of humorous dystopia exemplified by the work of [[Robert Sheckley]]. He further displayed his devotion to the genre in editing, with the [[Sovietologist]] [[Robert Conquest]], the science-fiction anthology series ''Spectrum'' I–V, which drew heavily upon 1950s numbers of the magazine ''[[Analog Science Fiction and Fact|Astounding Science Fiction]]''.

Though not explicitly science fiction, ''The Anti-Death League'' takes liberties with reality not found in Amis's earlier novels. It introduces a speculative bent that continued to develop in others of his genre novels, such as ''[[The Green Man (Kingsley Amis novel)|The Green Man]]'' (1969) (mystery/horror) and ''[[The Alteration]]'' (1976) ([[Alternate history|alternative history]]). Much of this speculation concerned the improbability of the existence of any benevolent deity involved in human affairs.

In ''The Anti-Death League'', ''The Green Man'', ''The Alteration'' and elsewhere, including poems such as "The Huge Artifice: an interim assessment" and "New Approach Needed", Amis showed frustration with a God who could lace the world with cruelty and injustice, and championed the preservation of ordinary human happiness—in family, in friendships, in physical pleasure—against the demands of any cosmological scheme. Amis's religious views appear in a response reported in his ''Memoirs''. To the Russian poet [[Yevgeny Yevtushenko]]'s question, "You atheist?" Amis replied, "It's more that I hate Him."

During this time, Amis had not turned completely away from the comedic realism of ''Lucky Jim'' and ''Take a Girl Like You''. ''I Want It Now'' (1968) and ''Girl, 20'' (1971) both depict the "swinging" atmosphere of late-1960s London, in which Amis certainly participated, though neither book is strictly autobiographical. ''Girl, 20'', for instance, is set in the world of classical (and pop) music, in which Amis had no part. The book's noticeable command of music terminology and opinion shows Amis's amateur devotion to music and almost journalistic capacity to explore a subject that interested him. That intelligence is similarly displayed in the ecclesiastical matters in ''The Alteration''; Amis was neither a Roman Catholic nor a devotee of any church.

Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Amis regularly produced essays and criticism, principally for periodical publication. Some were collected in 1968 into ''What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Essays'', in which Amis's wit and literary and social opinions were displayed on books such as [[Colin Wilson]]'s ''The Outsider'' (panned), [[Iris Murdoch]]'s début novel ''Under the Net'' (praised), and [[William Empson]]'s ''Milton's God'' (inclined to agreement). Amis's opinions on books and people tended to appear, and often were, conservative, and yet, as the title essay of the collection shows, he was not merely reverent of "the classics" and of traditional morals but more disposed to exercise his own rather independent judgement in all things.

Amis became associated with [[Ian Fleming]]'s [[James Bond]] novels, which he admired, in the late 1960s, when he began composing critical works connected with Bond, either under a pseudonym or uncredited. In 1965, he wrote the popular ''[[The James Bond Dossier|James Bond Dossier]]'' under his own name. The same year, he wrote ''[[The Book of Bond]], or, Every Man His Own 007'', a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a sophisticated spy, under the pseudonym "Lt Col. William ('Bill') Tanner", Tanner being M's chief of staff in many of Fleming's novels. In 1968, Amis wrote ''[[Colonel Sun]]'', which was published under the pseudonym "[[Robert Markham]]".

Amis's literary style and tone changed significantly after 1970, with the possible exception of ''[[The Old Devils]]'', a [[Booker Prize]] winner. Several critics found him old-fashioned and misogynistic. His ''[[Stanley and the Women (novel)|Stanley and the Women]]'', an exploration of social sanity, could be said to instance these traits. Others said that his output lacked his earlier work's humanity, wit and compassion.

This period also saw Amis as an anthologist, displaying a wide knowledge of all kinds of English poetry. ''The New Oxford Book of Light Verse'' (1978), which he edited, was a revision of an original volume by [[W. H. Auden]]. Amis took it in a markedly new direction: Auden had interpreted light verse to include "low" verse of working-class or lower-class origin, regardless of subject matter, while Amis defined light verse as essentially light in tone, though not necessarily simple in composition. ''The Amis Anthology'' (1988), a personal selection of his favourite poems, grew out of his work for a London newspaper, in which he selected a poem a day and gave it a brief introduction.<ref>Fussell, ''The Anti-Egotist''.</ref>

Amis was shortlisted for the [[Booker Prize]] three times, for ''Ending Up'' (1974) and ''Jake's Thing'' (1978), and finally, as a prizewinner for ''[[The Old Devils]]'' in 1986.<ref>[http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/authors/27 The Man Booker Prizes] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120224062830/http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/authors/27 |title=Kingsley Amis|date=24 February 2012}}</ref>

In 2008, ''[[The Times]]'' ranked Amis 13th on its list of the 50 greatest [[British literature|British writers]] since 1945.<ref>[http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece The 50 greatest British writers since 1945] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110425050801/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece |date=25 April 2011 }}. ''[[The Times]]'', 5 January 2008, accessed 8 February 2010.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=List |url=http://www.listsofbests.com/list/93594-the-times-50-greatest-british-writers-since-1945 |access-date=25 November 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111205220521/http://www.listsofbests.com/list/93594-the-times-50-greatest-british-writers-since-1945 |archive-date=5 December 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

==Personal life==
===Political views===
As a young man at Oxford, Amis joined the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]] and left it in 1956.<ref>Martin Amis, ''Koba the Dread'' (2002).</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/28/mi5-kept-tabs-young-communist-kingsley-amis/ |title=MI5 reports on Amis. Retrieved 21 January 2019. |newspaper=The Telegraph |date=28 November 2017 |access-date=21 January 2019 |archive-date=21 January 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190121121758/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/28/mi5-kept-tabs-young-communist-kingsley-amis/ |url-status=live |last1=Farmer |first1=Ben }}</ref> He later described this stage of his political life as "the callow [[Marxist]] phase that seemed almost compulsory in Oxford."<ref>Amis, ''Socialism and the Intellectuals'', cited by Leader, 2006, p. 366.</ref> Amis remained nominally on the [[political left]] for some time after the war, declaring in the 1950s that he would always vote for the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]].<ref>Leader, 2006, p. 366.</ref>

Amis eventually moved further to the [[political right]], a development he discussed in the essay "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967); his [[conservatism]] and [[anti-communism]] are visible in works like the dystopian novel ''Russian Hide and Seek'' (1980).<ref>[[Neal Ascherson]], [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n10/neal-ascherson/red-souls "Red Souls"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190620094410/https://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n10/neal-ascherson/red-souls |date=20 June 2019 }}, ''London Review of Books'', Vol. 2, No. 10, May 1980. Retrieved 20 June 2019.</ref> In 1967, Amis, [[Robert Conquest]], [[John Braine]], and several other authors signed a letter to ''[[The Times]]'' entitled "Backing for U.S. Policies in Vietnam", supporting the US government in the [[Vietnam War]].<ref>John Wakeman, ''World Authors 1950–1970: A Companion Volume to Twentieth Century Authors''. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1975, pp. 448–448 {{ISBN|0824204190}}.</ref> He spoke at the [[Adam Smith Institute]], arguing against government subsidy to the arts.<ref>[[Madsen Pirie]], ''Think Tank: The Story of the Adam Smith Institute'', [[Biteback Publishing]], 2012, p. 140.</ref>

===Character===
By his own admission and according to his biographers, Amis was a serial [[adultery|adulterer]] for much of his life. This was a major contributory factor in the breakdown of his first marriage. A famous photograph of a sleeping Amis on a Yugoslav beach shows the slogan (written in lipstick by wife Hilary) on his back "1 Fat Englishman—I fuck anything."<ref>Leader 2006, opposite p. 565.</ref>

In one memoir, Amis wrote, "Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time".<ref name="booze">''Memoirs'': "Booze".</ref> He suggests this reflects a naïve tendency in readers to apply the behaviour of his characters to himself. He enjoyed drink and spent a good deal of time in pubs. [[Hilary Rubinstein]], who accepted ''Lucky Jim'' for [[Victor Gollancz]], commented, "I doubted whether Jim Dixon would have gone to the pub and drunk ten pints of beer.... I didn't know Kingsley very well, you see."<ref>Quoted in Bradford, Chapter 5.</ref>

[[Clive James]] commented: "All on his own, he had the weekly drinks bill of a whole table at the [[Garrick Club]] even before he was elected. After he was, he would get so tight there that he could barely make it to the taxi."<ref name="ReferenceA">Clive James, "Kingsley without the women", ''[[The Times Literary Supplement|Times Literary Supplement]]'', 2 February 2007.</ref> But Amis was adamant that inspiration did not come from a bottle: "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work."<ref name="booze"/>

This matched a disciplined approach to writing. For "many years" Amis imposed a rigorous daily schedule on himself, segregating writing and drink. Mornings were spent on writing, with a minimum daily output of 500 words.<ref>Jacobs, 1995, pp. 6 and 17.</ref> Drinking began about lunchtime, when this had been achieved. Such self-discipline was essential to Amis's prodigious output.

Yet according to James, Amis reached a turning point when his drinking ceased to be social and became a way of dulling his remorse and regret at his behaviour towards Hilly. "Amis had turned against himself deliberately.... It seems fair to guess that the troubled grandee came to disapprove of his own conduct."<ref name="ReferenceA"/> His friend [[Christopher Hitchens]] said: "The booze got to him in the end, and robbed him of his wit and charm as well as of his health."<ref>Kingsley Amis, ''Everyday Drinking'', New York: [[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury USA]], 2008, editor's introduction.</ref>

===Antisemitism===
Amis had an unclear relationship with [[antisemitism]], which he sometimes expressed but also claimed to dislike.<ref>[[Anthony Julius]], ''[[Trials of the Diaspora, A History of Anti-Semitism in England]]'', [[Oxford University Press]], 2010, pp. 357–358.</ref> He occasionally speculated on the commonly advanced Jewish stereotypes. Antisemitism was sometimes present in his conversations and letters to friends and associates, such as "The great Jewish vice is glibness, fluency ... also possibly just bullshit, as in [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]], [[Herbert Marcuse|Marcuse]]", or "[[Charlie Chaplin|Chaplin]] [who was not Jewish] is a horse's arse. He's a Jeeeew you see, like the [[Marx Brothers]], like [[Danny Kaye]]." It is a minor theme in his ''Stanley and the Women'' novel about a paranoid schizophrenic<!-- !  check for tone -->. As for the cultural complexion of the United States, Amis had this to say: "I've finally worked out why I don't like Americans ... . Because everyone there is either a Jew or a hick." Amis himself described his antisemitism as "very mild".<ref>Julius, p. 358.</ref>

==Family==
Amis's first, 15-year marriage was to [[Hilary Bardwell]],<ref>Hilary Amis was later wife to the classicist [[D. R. Shackleton Bailey]] (married 1967; divorced 1975) and [[Alastair Boyd, 7th Baron Kilmarnock|the late Lord Kilmarnock]] (married 1977; died 19 March 2009). She had a son James or Jaime, born still out of wedlock, by her third husband (often called her second husband by the media), who was therefore unable to inherit his father's peerage.</ref> the daughter of a civil servant,<ref name=Martin>Mira Stout. [https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/01/home/amis-stout.html "Martin Amis: Down London's Mean Streets"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171108205127/http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/01/home/amis-stout.html |date=8 November 2017 }}, ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'', 4 February 1990. Sunday, Late Edition – Final Section 6; p. 32, Column 1; Magazine Desk.</ref> by whom he had two sons and one daughter: Philip Amis, a graphics designer;<ref name="Martin"/> [[Martin Amis]], a novelist who died in 2023;<ref>[[Boyd Tonkin]], [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-amis-the-man-who-fell-to-earth-231583.html "Martin Amis: The man who fell to earth"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220707015719/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-amis-the-man-who-fell-to-earth-231583.html |date=7 July 2022 }}, ''[[The Independent]]'', 13 May 2000.</ref> and [[Sally Amis]], who died in 2000.

Amis was married a second time, to the novelist [[Elizabeth Jane Howard]] from 1965 to 1983, with whom he had no children. At the end of that marriage, he went to live with his former wife Hilary and her third husband, in a deal brokered by their two sons Philip and Martin to ensure he could be cared for until his death.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Jacobs |first1=Eric |title=Sir Kingsley Amis obituary: From angry young man to old devil |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/1995/oct/23/fiction.kingsleyamis |access-date=21 May 2020 |work=The Guardian |date=23 October 1995 |archive-date=23 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231023170545/https://www.theguardian.com/books/1995/oct/23/fiction.kingsleyamis |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Partial bibliography==
{{Div col|colwidth=30em}}

===Poetry===
*1947 ''Bright November''
*1953 ''A Frame of Mind''
*1954 ''Poems: Fantasy Portraits''
*1956 ''A Case of Samples: Poems 1946–1956''
*1962 ''The Evans County''
*1968 ''A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957–1967''
*1979 ''Collected Poems 1944–78''

===Fiction===
;Novels
*c. 1948 ''The Legacy'' (unpublished)
*1954 ''[[Lucky Jim]]''
*1955 ''[[That Uncertain Feeling (novel)|That Uncertain Feeling]]''
*1958 ''[[I Like It Here]]''
*1960 ''[[Take a Girl Like You]]''
*1963 ''One Fat Englishman''
*1965 ''The Egyptologists'' (with [[Robert Conquest]])
*1966 ''[[The Anti-Death League]]''
*1968 ''[[Colonel Sun|Colonel Sun: a James Bond Adventure]]'' (pseud. [[Robert Markham]])
*1968 ''I Want It Now''
*1969 ''[[The Green Man (Kingsley Amis novel)|The Green Man]]''
*1971 ''[[Girl, 20]]''
*1973 ''The Riverside Villas Murder''
*1974 ''Ending Up''
*1975 ''The Crime of the Century''
*1976 ''[[The Alteration]]''
*1978 ''[[Jake's Thing]]''
*1980 ''Russian Hide-and-Seek''
*1984 ''[[Stanley and the Women (novel)|Stanley and the Women]]''
*1986 ''[[The Old Devils]]''
*1988 ''Difficulties with Girls''
*1990 ''[[The Folks That Live on the Hill]]''
*1991 ''We Are All Guilty''
*1992 ''[[The Russian Girl]]''
*1994 ''You Can't Do Both''
*1995 ''The Biographer's Moustache''
*c. 1995 ''Black and White'' (unfinished){{sfn|Leader|2006|pp=778–779}}
;Short fiction collections
*1962 ''My Enemy's Enemy''
*1980 ''Collected Short Stories''
*1991 ''Mr Barrett's Secret and Other Stories''
;Other short fiction
*1960 "Hemingway in Space" (short story), ''[[Punch magazine|Punch]]'', December 1960

===Non-fiction===
*1957 ''[https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/Documents/Detail/socialism-and-the-intellectuals-1957/103201 Socialism and the Intellectuals]'', a [[Fabian Society]] pamphlet
*1960 ''New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction''
*1965 ''[[The James Bond Dossier]]''
*1965 ''[[The Book of Bond|The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007]]'' (pseud. [[Bill Tanner|Lt.-Col William ('Bill') Tanner]])
*1970 ''What Became of Jane Austen?, and Other Questions''
*1972 ''On Drink''
*1974 ''Rudyard Kipling and His World''
*1983 ''Everyday Drinking''
*1984 ''How's Your Glass?''
*1990 ''The Amis Collection''
*1991 ''Memoirs''
*1997 ''The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage'' (name in part a pun as he was sometimes called "Kingers" or "The King" by friends and family, as told by his son Martin in his memoir ''[[Experience (book)|Experience]]'')
*2001 ''[[The Letters of Kingsley Amis]]'', Edited by [[Zachary Leader]]
*2008 ''Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis'', Introduction by [[Christopher Hitchens]] (an omnibus edition of ''On Drink'', ''Everyday Drinking'' and ''How's Your Glass?'')

===Editor===
*1961–66 ''Spectrum'' anthology series (ed. with Robert Conquest)(Five volumes)
*1978 ''The New Oxford Book of Light Verse'' (ed.)
*1981 [[The Golden Age of Science Fiction (anthology)|''The Golden Age of Science Fiction'']] (ed.)
{{Div col end}}

{{Portal|Biography|Poetry}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Sources==
*{{Cite book |first=Kingsley|last=Amis|title=Kingsley Amis: Memoirs|publisher=Penguin|year=1992}}
*{{Cite book |title=[[The Letters of Kingsley Amis]]|editor-last=Leader|editor-first=Zachary|last=Amis|first=Kingsley|editor-link=Zachary Leader|publisher=HarperCollins|year=2000|isbn=0-00-257095-5}}
*{{Cite book |title=No, Not Bloomsbury |author-link=Malcolm Bradbury |last=Bradbury |first=Malcolm|publisher=Arena |year=1989|isbn=0-09-954410-5 }}
*{{Cite book |last=Bradford |first=Richard |title=Lucky Him: The Life of Kingsley Amis |publisher=Peter Owen |year=2001 |isbn=0-7206-1117-2 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/luckyhimlifeofk00brad }}
*{{Cite book |title=The Anti-Egotist: Kingsley Amis, Man of Letters |first=Paul |last=Fussell |publisher=Oxford UP |year=1994 }}
*{{Cite book |title=Kingsley Amis, a Biography |url=https://archive.org/details/kingsleyamisbiog0000jaco |url-access=registration |first=Eric |last=Jacobs |publisher=Hodder & Stoughton |year=1995 |isbn=0-340-59072-6 }}
*{{Cite book |title=The Life of Kingsley Amis |last=Leader |first=Zachary |author-link=Zachary Leader |publisher=[[Jonathan Cape]] |year=2006 |isbn=0-224-06227-1}}
*{{Cite book |title=Amis & Son – Two literary generations |url=https://archive.org/details/amissontwolitera0000powe_k1s0 |url-access=registration |first=Neil |last=Powell |publisher=Pan Macmillan |year=2008 |isbn=9781405054621 }}
*{{Cite book |title=Success Stories: Literature and the Media in England, 1950–1959 |url=https://archive.org/details/successstoriesli0000ritc |url-access=registration |first=Harry |last=Ritchie |publisher=Faber & Faber|year=1988 |isbn=0-571-14764-X }}
*''Kingsley Amis's Troublesome Fun'', Michael Dirda. [[The Chronicle of Higher Education]] 22 June 2007. B9-B11.
*{{Cite book |title=Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million|url=https://archive.org/details/kobadreadlaughte00amis|url-access=registration| first=Martin| last=Amis |publisher=Talk Miramax Books |year=2002 |isbn=978-1400032204 }}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*{{ISFDB name|id=Kingsley_Amis|name=Kingsley Amis}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20090512174918/http://www.williams.edu/English/faculty/rbell/scholarship-and-criticism/AmisIntro.html "Kingsley Amis in the Great Tradition and in Our Time,"] by Robert H. Bell, Williams College. Introduction to ''Critical Essays on Kingsley Amis'', ed. Robert H. Bell, New York: G.K. Hall, 1998.
*[http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-5,00.html Guardian Books "Author Page"], with profile and links to further articles.
*{{Cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3772/the-art-of-fiction-no-59-kingsley-amis|journal=The Paris Review|title=Kingsley Amis, The Art of Fiction No. 59|author=Michael Barber|date=Winter 1975 |volume=Winter 1975 |issue=64 }}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20081207110610/http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?search_term=chatfield&id=8249 "The Serious Comedian"], by Tom Chatfield, ''[[Prospect (magazine)|Prospect]]'', a review of Zachary Leader's biography.
*[http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-old-devil-2606 "The old devil"] – article on Amis by [[Mark Steyn]] in ''[[The New Criterion]]''
*[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22amises.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin The Amis Inheritance]—Profile on Martin and Kingsley Amis by Charles McGrath from ''[[New York Times Magazine]]'' (22 April 2007).
*[http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00007.xml&query=amis&query-join=and Kingsley Amis Collection] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130116084425/http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead%2F00007.xml&query=amis&query-join=and |date=16 January 2013 }} at the [[Harry Ransom Center]] at the [[University of Texas at Austin]].
*[http://www.sfwa.org/hidden-pages/estates-contact-information/ Kingsley Amis] Literary Estate
*{{NPG name}}
*{{UK National Archives ID}}

{{Kingsley Amis}}
{{Angry young men}}
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{{Martin Amis}}

{{Authority control}}

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