William Empson was born in 1906 in Howden, Yorkshire, into a landowning family. He became one of the most formidable minds in English letters during the twentieth century—a poet and critic whose influence reached far beyond the relatively small amount of poetry he published.
Initially studying mathematics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he later switched to English literature, where he was deeply inspired by I. A. Richards. This change had significant consequences for many. While still a student, Empson penned the essays that would form *Seven Types of Ambiguity* (1930), a groundbreaking book that reshaped readers' understanding of how poems engage with language. His argument was both straightforward and radical: ambiguity in a text isn't a flaw to be eliminated but rather a source of meaning. A thoughtful reader should pursue it rather than resolve it hastily. This concept became a foundation of what critics later termed New Criticism, although Empson himself distanced from the movement's more rigid interpretations.
“His academic journey took him far from Yorkshire.”
He taught in Tokyo and later in Beijing, experiencing the Japanese invasion and the tumult of the 1930s and 1940s, which significantly influenced his perspectives on power, empire, and the complexities of being a Westerner abroad. After World War II, he returned to England and eventually became the Chair of English Literature at the University of Sheffield, where he taught until 1971.
As a poet, Empson was never prolific. His two main collections, *Poems* (1935) and *The Gathering Storm* (1940), feature a relatively small body of work, but each poem is packed with extraordinary density. He often wrote in traditional forms—such as villanelles and sonnets—with tight stanza structures, infusing them with scientific imagery, logical puzzles, and emotional depth that subtly unfolds over time. His poems reward slow reading, much like the careful reading he championed as a critic.
