Greta Bellamacina

Black Under Heaven

and a car that gave them the opportunity to visit the Everglades. Empson enjoyed teaching his Modern English Poetry course. Unfortunately he also experienced the ominous onset of illness that curtailed his drinking, manifesting itself firstly in backache. It was the end of America.

Michael Wood, in On Empson (2017), rightly observes that, despite his public disavowals, Empson is connected with ‘all the major modern movements of criticism and theory’ because ‘his preoccupations are central to any sort of ongoing thought about literature’. America, which constantly indulged him and had been well rewarded for it, had recognised this early.