On viewing pictures of himself he variously described them as looking "like the late Stan Laurel" or "CS Lewis on a drugs charge" and displaying "as much expression as a lump of sugar". He saw himself as "a cross between an egg and a bloodhound" or "an egg sculpted in lard, with goggles on".

He obviously couldn't bear to look at himself, and the extent of his discomfort with his image is revealed in correspondence with photographer Fay Godwin, whose archive of 11,000 exhibition prints, contact sheets, negatives, office records and letters from her subjects has been acquired by the British Library. It was donated to the state by the Godwin family in lieu of inheritance tax, following the photographer's death three years ago.

The self-taught Fay Godwin – who rarely featured on the other side of the camera herself – was best known in later decades for her evocative landscape photography, which grew out of her love of walking, particularly in the British countryside.

But before that she was a respected portrait photographer, whose subjects often belonged to the crème de la crème of literary society, and included Kingsley Amis, Doris Lessing, Margaret Drabble, Ted Hughes, Saul Bellow and Angela Carter, as well as Larkin. The photos were mostly taken in the sitters' homes, many of them commissioned by publishers for publicity and book-jacket purposes.

The photographer struck up a friendship with some of her subjects, including Larkin, Amis, John Fowles and Doris Lessing. After she first took photos of the poet in 1969, he glumly observed that "it must have been a thankless task..."

After another shoot a few years later, Larkin was sent the contact sheet to approve images for publication, but wrote to Godwin that he disliked shots "where I am peering out from among dark shelves with a somewhat furtive, whimsical appearance".

Yet, at the same time, he was said to have liked making ironic references to his career as a librarian, much of it spent at Hull University.

In 1983, and as a result of an apparent misunderstanding, a photo Larkin hated (and christened "the Boston Strangler picture") was published. Godwin was mortified and blamed the publisher. Another shoot was arranged, and Larkin stipulated in writing that this time "I am not bald, I have only one chin, my waist is concave..." Was he insecure, or merely vain?

The ostensibly self-deprecating poet obviously liked Fay Godwin – despite the fact that she could not alter an appearance he viewed as "depressing, depressing, depressing..." – and he sat for her regularly before his death in 1985.

"The value of the collection to us is that it includes some very fine portraits of leading literary figures of our times, and the archive as a whole gives a fascinating glimpse of artistic life," says John Falconer, head of visual materials at the British Library. He says it will be some time before cataloguing is complete and public access to the Godwin archive is available.

"They were both clearly quite feisty people who struck up a good relationship despite the odd hiccup. Looking across the collection of photographs, it's interesting to see how people chose to let themselves be seen.

"For example, in pictures of Kingsley Amis there is always a bottle in the image, and one shows a row of empty whisky bottles beside him." It has not yet been revealed what wry comments were made by Amis in his correspondence with the photographer.