Fuller, Roy (Broadbent) (1912-1991)

English poet and novelist. His early verse, including the collections Poems (1940) and The Middle of a War (1944), was concerned with social problems. With Counterparts (1954), his work became more personal and allusive. His novels are particularly concerned with mental turmoil and difficult relationships: they include Image of a Society (1956), My Child, My Sister (1965), and The Carnal Island (1970). The Strange and the Good: Collected Memoirs was published in 1989.

His later collections of verse include Brutus's Orchard (1957), The Reign of Sparrows (1980) and New and Collected Poems 1934-1984 (1985).

Fuller was born in Lancashire. He became a solicitor in 1934, and followed a legal career. He was professor of poetry at Oxford University from 1968-73 and wrote several critical works, including his Oxford lectures on poetry, Owls and Artificers (1971), and Professors and Gods (1973). His later poems typically begin with a closely observed naturalistic detail, and move by complex and ingenious paths towards reflections on the nature of human existence.