Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence

by D.H. Lawrence

Phoenix, one of the great works in the Lawrence bibliography, id a posthumous collection of a vast amount of Lawrence material that for many years remained either unavailable in book form or simply unpublished in any form. In this volume appear works written as early as 1912 and as late as 1930, and almost every year in between is represented with something that was unknown to the public. The material contained in Phoenix is as intense, diverse, wide, and original as Lawrence's mind and interests. Included are essays, sketches, and critical studies on such topics as nature; peoples, countries, and races; love, sex, men, and women; ethics, psychology, and philosophy; literature and art, including a book-length study of Thomas Hardy; a long essay on popular education; and outspoken comment on many of his contemporaries. Edward D. McDonald, Lawrence's American bibliographer, has selected and arranged the material as well as provided the book with an illuminating introduction. To students and admirers of Lawrence, Phoenix is a fascinating and essential addition to their knowledge of Lawrence's mind and his work.

Genres: Essays

Paperback

Published September 20, 1972

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

[Rebekah]

Not to be read through all the way; some of the essays I loved, some I could not read. Luckily they are arranged by subject, and typically if I liked one in a subject I liked them all. My dad loves the travel essays, most of which I could not get into (although the one on Taos was pretty good... well, I guess any of the travel essays on PEOPLE rather than scenery were pretty good). I love the essays on love and sex. What can I say, it is what he's famous for!

And next month we're going up to Taos to see his "ranch" and his grave and his paintings... Yay!

[Hanny]

[includes "Introduction to These Paintings" (561-84)]