Volume 26, Number 14 · September 27, 1979
The Wars of D.H. Lawrence
By John Gross
The Letters of D.H. Lawrence Volume 1: September 1901-May 1913
edited by James T. Boulton
Cambridge University Press, 579 pp., $29.50
D.H. Lawrence's Nightmare: The Writer and His Circle in the Years of the Great War
by Paul Delany
Basic Books, 420 pp., $15.95
Lives and Letters: A.R. Orage, Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, and S.S. Koteliansky, 1906-1957
by John Carswell
New Directions, 307 pp., $15.00
Shortly after the death of D.H. Lawrence in 1930 Aldous Huxley began collecting Lawrence's letters for publication, and within two years—taking time off from his own writing, working without benefit of grants or Guggenheims or microfilm or an Editorial Board—he was ready to see through the press a volume of nearly 900 pages. A notable achievement: even the late Dr. Leavis (of mixed memory, as somebody said) was moved to acknowledge how valuable a service Huxley had performed on behalf of his friend. As indeed he had. The Letters of D.H. Lawrence (1932) revealed new and powerful aspects of Lawrence's genius; it quickly took its place, not as a mere annex to his other work, but alongside the best of his essays and travel writing and literary criticism.
Review, 6058 words
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