The Boy in the Bush

by D.H. Lawrence, M.L. Skinner

Jack Grant arrives in Western Australia in 1882, having been expelled from his public school and then sent down from an agricultural college. He experiences hunting, farming, gold mining, fights and his first love of women. His character is forged by the Australian landscape and its hard, no-nonsense people. From the young boy emerges a tough Lawrentian hero.

Lawrence and his wife Frieda, arrived in Australia in 1922 where they met the Quaker nurse Mollie Skinner. Skinner showed Lawrence her novel, "Black Swans". Lawrence advised her to drop this book and write about the first settlers in Australia. In 1923 Skinner sent Lawrence her novel, "The House of Ellis" which Lawrence completely rewrote and published as "The Boy in the Bush". Skinner gave her permission for the redrafting but is said to have wept at the new ending. "The Boy in the Bush" ‘perhaps gives us Lawrence’s response to Australia more purely than his own Australian novel Kangaroo.’

Genres: Fiction, Classics, 20th Century, Novels, British Literature, Australia

388 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1930

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

[MJ Nicholls]

Lawrence took a manuscript from amateur author M.L. Skinner and recast that into this work that (at least from the first 60 pages) reads nothing like a Lawrence novel, and exactly like a tiresome fish-out-of-water adventure saga with utterly tedious prose and hackneyed dialogue. Research indicates Lawrence is responsible for only a quarter of the text, mainly adding the ending and other odd chapters. A strange curio in the DHL canon, best forgotten.

D.H. Lawrence RANKED

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg

I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and Project Gutenberg will publish it.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really peculiar book to read - its a collaboration between an amateur Australian writer and D H Lawrence and written in 1924. I bought it because of that alone though a quick flick through the pages looked ominous. I tried to imagine - as I stood at LifeLine Bookfair in Canberra with a bag already bulging with books that required serious thinking, book by book - how that could work as the mix of Lawrence and early Australia could only, I thought, meet at the point of raw newness, exile or escape from an older civilization, youth and everything rampant that goes with that if the youth is lucky enough to have the freedom necessary for its full expression (which early 'unsettled' according to the history books Australia was said to be) and it turned exactly as I vaguely imagined. Lots and lots of pure undiluted Lawrence rampaging through well behaved ex pat British settlers or born Aus but connected by the heart and soul to the England their predecessors left. After awhile I read it with an eye to trying to identify where the M L Skinner contributions were, as Lawrence's were obvious, both in pieces of writing and in the plot. I think it was a mix as there is some solid, real Australian flavoured writing - and the characters are unique, dry and fascinating enough I think to be genuine under the Lawrentian exhuberance. I am glad I read it. It is a fascinating exercise, not as good I think as I recall his 'Kangaroo' to be, as I remember I enjoyed that - but I was younger and still getting excited when I saw Australia mentioned anywhere by non-Aus authors. So, maybe not. I am glad I read it for the bits of Australian-ess that came through undamaged by Lawrence's touch. A lot of it was so overblown the content got lost in the Lawrentian inferno but there were moments, I think, where he captured something magical about how the bush felt on horseback, the beauty of its freshness and newness as it was then, and the freedom it offered, that maybe a well behaved Australian might have missed. That - or it was Skinner's touch. It has made me now need to find out more about her, how they met, and most of all what she thought of the end result.

[Margarita · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collaborative effort between Skinner and Lawrence. Jack Grant’s rawness and ruthlessness is compellingly, if controversially written. There is though what feels like a lot of repetition at times which unnecessarily draws out the story longer than it needs to be.

[Jmolentin]

The copy in my library is from the Henry Lawson Bookshop in Sydney. Would like to more about the original idea from M L Skinner and how much Lawrence used. It's a strange novel, especially the pacing.

[Solange Dietsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this story, it’s an adventure novel whose writing is pleasant and was passionate about the life of this boy who discovers Australia. Very pleasant reading !

[Maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay this is a book D.H. Lawrence "fixed up" for ML Skinner. I think I like DH Lawrence's stuff better. But I'm not done yet, so we shall see. Okay didn't like this book. Too much repetition and boring as all get out. The basic story was good, but could have been told in 1/2 the number of pages. The main character is a "freak" on so many levels.

[David Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written novel, engrossing and well-developed, but hard on the anti-patriarchal sense of mind. And not entirely earth-shattering or life-changing. But certainly controversial.

[Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

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