- Hardcover: 816 pages
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press (13 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0521254213
- ISBN-13: 978-0521254212
- Product Dimensions: 24.2 x 16.4 x 4.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,286,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
Review of the hardback: 'To say that the final chapters of David Ellis's exemplary biography are overwhelmingly moving is in no way to diminish the good work that has gone before. From the start Ellis combines the need for an exhaustive documentary record with the ability to tell a coherent, compelling story … Ellis's greatest achievement, though, is to give us such a vivid sense of Lawrence at work, of how, on a day-to-day basis, he transmuted his experience into words.' Geoff Dyer, London Evening Standard
Review of the hardback: '… scholarly, reverential, magnificently detailed, anatomising the multitudinous writings against the backdrop of his turbulent, loving, yet adversarial life.' William Scammell, Independent on Sunday
Review of the hardback: 'The great achievement of this third volume lies in the biographer's ability to acknowledge the less attractive aspects of Lawrence's personality while still presenting his essential genius and integrity of the man. Professor Ellis provides the fullest and most perspicacious account of the novelist's last years; his insight is compelling and his narrative arresting. He is particularly good at displaying the gentler and more sympathetic aspects of Lawrence's character, in particular that instinctive gaiety which captivated acquaintances … This third volume of the Cambridge biography also completes a worthy and brave endeavour: D. H. Lawrence will never again be known so completely or so well.' Peter Ackroyd
Review of the hardback: '[This] is a most impressive achievement, and fully maintains the quite exemplarily high scholarly standards adhered to by the first two volumes. Written with the requisite tact (and a lot of tact is required), the ample, well-balanced text is supplemented by nearly 200 pages of extremely useful appendices and notes, which constitute an archive in themselves; plus a chronology, and a fifty-five-page index which could not be improved on.' Tony Tanner, Times Literary Supplement
Review of the hardback: 'As a record of Lawrence's daily life, of his movements, of where he stayed, who he talked to, what he wrote and said, Ellis's biography is a work of exemplary research.' Allan Massie, Literary Review
Review of the hardback: 'All you want to know about Lawrence's wanderings in his final years.' The Observer
Review of the hardback: 'This is a work of great assiduity and completeness, a fit companion to the other two volumes of the Cambridge life.' The Sunday Times
Review of the hardback: '… scholarly, reverential, magnificently detailed, anatomising the multitudinous writings against the backdrop of his turbulent, loving, yet adversarial life.' William Scammell, Independent on Sunday
Review of the hardback: 'The great achievement of this third volume lies in the biographer's ability to acknowledge the less attractive aspects of Lawrence's personality while still presenting his essential genius and integrity of the man. Professor Ellis provides the fullest and most perspicacious account of the novelist's last years; his insight is compelling and his narrative arresting. He is particularly good at displaying the gentler and more sympathetic aspects of Lawrence's character, in particular that instinctive gaiety which captivated acquaintances … This third volume of the Cambridge biography also completes a worthy and brave endeavour: D. H. Lawrence will never again be known so completely or so well.' Peter Ackroyd
Review of the hardback: '[This] is a most impressive achievement, and fully maintains the quite exemplarily high scholarly standards adhered to by the first two volumes. Written with the requisite tact (and a lot of tact is required), the ample, well-balanced text is supplemented by nearly 200 pages of extremely useful appendices and notes, which constitute an archive in themselves; plus a chronology, and a fifty-five-page index which could not be improved on.' Tony Tanner, Times Literary Supplement
Review of the hardback: 'As a record of Lawrence's daily life, of his movements, of where he stayed, who he talked to, what he wrote and said, Ellis's biography is a work of exemplary research.' Allan Massie, Literary Review
Review of the hardback: 'All you want to know about Lawrence's wanderings in his final years.' The Observer
Review of the hardback: 'This is a work of great assiduity and completeness, a fit companion to the other two volumes of the Cambridge life.' The Sunday Times
Product Description
Originally published in 1998, the final volume of the Cambridge Biography of D. H. Lawrence chronicles his progress from leaving Europe in 1922 to his death in Venice in 1930. Based on much previously unfamiliar material, it describes his travels in Ceylon, Australia, the USA and Mexico in an increasingly desperate search for an ideal community. With his return to Europe in 1925, there is a detailed account of his rediscovery of painting, his battle against censorship, and the vitality with which he resisted the debilitating effects of tuberculosis. Kangaroo, The Plumed Serpent and Lady Chatterley's Lover are usually seen as the literary landmarks of these years; but this was the period in which Lawrence also wrote remarkable novellas, essays, criticism, short stories and poems. He is revealed here as a man both more complex and more humorous than is usually allowed, and exemplary in his resolute grappling with the central problems of his age.
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It is not immediately obvious why any Englishman born and bred in the industrial Midlands should ever want to leave Taormina. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
It is not immediately obvious why any Englishman born and bred in the industrial Midlands should ever want to leave Taormina. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An extraordinary achievement. Ellis's ability to reconstruct this last phase of Lawrence' life in such detail, while always carrying his scholarship lightly, must be admired. Ellis does not go in for much speculation - partly because of the relative abundance of first-hand evidence, which he deftly weighs up. The reader is not burdened with biographical agonising.
The Lawrence of this phase comes across as a sadly isolated, marginalised figure - despite his considerable socialising. The nature of his sometimes violent relationship with Frieda is well elucidated by Ellis, through an accumulation of episodes, statements and writings, rather than by the imposition of one declarative, biographical view. Ellis, one feels, does not like Frieda that much, yet is not prejudiced. Middleton Murray is possibly a different case, but he had largely gone out of Lawrence's life by now.
Ellis seems somewhat embarrassed by Lawrence's racism and his fascistic views on power and leadership; though he does not skirt around them, the opportunity to relate them to the political and social malaise of the age is foregone. Ellis sees Lawrence quickly moving on from the "political" views of The Plumed Serpent to the "personal" emphasis of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and seems glad of it.
Ellis is good on Lawrence's painting, journalism and poetry: he quotes with great dexterity and illuminates much that is wonderful. In so doing, he rescues Lawrence's last years from the popular idea of diminished powers and rat-baggery. One would like more on the effect Lawrence had on ideas and people - in this telling, one can but share Lawrence's own feeling his efforts to affect change were largely thwarted. Ellis respects the limitations of biography (he writes, "there is a danger of pushing interpretation farther than is necessary for common understanding, and of tipping over into apologia"). They are not limits such as to prevent him producing a fine book.
The Lawrence of this phase comes across as a sadly isolated, marginalised figure - despite his considerable socialising. The nature of his sometimes violent relationship with Frieda is well elucidated by Ellis, through an accumulation of episodes, statements and writings, rather than by the imposition of one declarative, biographical view. Ellis, one feels, does not like Frieda that much, yet is not prejudiced. Middleton Murray is possibly a different case, but he had largely gone out of Lawrence's life by now.
Ellis seems somewhat embarrassed by Lawrence's racism and his fascistic views on power and leadership; though he does not skirt around them, the opportunity to relate them to the political and social malaise of the age is foregone. Ellis sees Lawrence quickly moving on from the "political" views of The Plumed Serpent to the "personal" emphasis of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and seems glad of it.
Ellis is good on Lawrence's painting, journalism and poetry: he quotes with great dexterity and illuminates much that is wonderful. In so doing, he rescues Lawrence's last years from the popular idea of diminished powers and rat-baggery. One would like more on the effect Lawrence had on ideas and people - in this telling, one can but share Lawrence's own feeling his efforts to affect change were largely thwarted. Ellis respects the limitations of biography (he writes, "there is a danger of pushing interpretation farther than is necessary for common understanding, and of tipping over into apologia"). They are not limits such as to prevent him producing a fine book.
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