D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile 19121922

by Mark Kinkead-Weekes

This volume of the Cambridge Biography begins with Lawrence and Frieda Weekley on the Ostend ferry in 1912, and ends in 1922 on a liner header for Ceylon. Frieda did not start with the intention of leaving her first husband and their children, but these ten years see the forging of a marriage that lasted Lawrence's lifetime. The decade sees the 'un-Englishing' of Lawrence: first through living in Italy and Germany before the Great War, and still more by his fervent opposition to that 'nightmare', and by the adverse reception of his work. In the war years he lost his audience, and then his home when he was expelled from Cornwall on suspicion of being a spy. Poor, and alienated, he became determined to emigrate, and in 1919 he did so - finding a new life and vitality in mainland Italy, Capri and Sicily, before moving out from Europe too, a restless traveller, as well as an adventurer in the mind. Lawrence explored his own experience in his writing with remarkable depth, courage and imagi