Fuller, Roy (1912-1991), was an English poet and novelist. His early poetry, collected in Poems (1939), shows the influence of the British poets W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender. Fuller wrote with a more distinctive style in the two collections inspired by his experiences in World War II (1939-1945), In the Middle of a War (1942) and A Lost Season (1944). His postwar poetry emphasized psychology and eventually considered the aging process and old age. These poems were published in such collections as Counterparts (1954), Brutus’s Orchard (1957), Buff (1965), From the Joke Shop (1975), and The Reign of Sparrows (1980). A comprehensive collection of his poetry was published in 1985 as New and Collected Poems 1934-1984.
Fuller wrote a number of novels, notably Image of a Society (1956), The Ruined Boys (1959), My Child My Sister (1965), and Stares (1990). He was professor of poetry at Oxford University from 1968 to 1973. Fuller’s university lectures were published in Owls and Artificers (1971) and Professors and Gods (1973). He wrote four volumes of memoirs, Souvenirs (1980), Vamp Till Ready (1982), Home and Dry (1984), and Spanner and Pen (1991).
Roy Broadbent Fuller was born on Feb. 11, 1912, in Failsworth, Lancashire, and educated in Blackpool, Lancashire. He became a lawyer in 1934 and continued his legal career while writing after the end of the war. He died on Sept. 27, 1991. John Fuller, his son, became a noted poet and novelist.
