Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays

by D.H. Lawrence, Bruce Steele (Editor)

D. H. Lawrence's 'Study of Thomas Hardy', written in the early months of World War I, was originally intended to be a short critical work on Hardy's characters, but developed into a major statement of Lawrence's philosophy of art. The introduction to this work shows its relation to Lawrence's final rewriting of The Rainbow and its place among his continual attempts to express his philosophy in a definitive form. Previously published posthumously from a corrupt typescript, the 'Study' is now more firmly based on Koteliansky's typescript - Lawrence having destroyed the manuscript. The other essays in this volume span virtually the whole of Lawrence's writing career, from 'Art and the Individual' (1908) to his last essay 'John Galsworthy', written in 1927. The introduction sets these essays in the context of Lawrence's life and work. The textual apparatus gives variant readings, and explanatory notes identify references and quotations, and offer background information.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...

Reviews

[Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're a Thomas Hardy fan and want to read another famous artist's opinion of his works, do not be fooled by the title of this book. That is not what it is.

Instead, the book is Lawrence's philosophical/religious treatise upon life. Sure, it's interesting and even has some amazing writing in it, but the title is misleading. Lawrence set out with the purpose indicated by the title. Life stepped in the way, and the book went a very different direction. Truthfully, whoever controls Lawrence's catalog should retitle the work with a subtitle of the original.

[whyfloat]

Strictly 4 the already initiated. For Hardy as with Galsworthy and Dostoevsky: less a fair reading than a tangent for Lawrence to build out and formulate his own philosophy and intent. But I do love the polemics here – he means well – and once you understand how to read them and how to take them they do lend a certain structure to esp. his Christian cosmology. A lot of this writes itself into the sort of euphoria which makes sense to oneself and oneself only – ”me alive“ as Lawrence so wonderfully puts it – and why is that not enough?