D. H. Lawrence's Australia ─ Anxiety at the Edge of Empire

The first full-length account of D.H. Lawrencea€?s rich engagement with a country he found both fascinating and frustrating, D.H. Lawrencea€?s Australia focuses on the philosophical, anthropological and literary influences that informed the utopian and regenerative visions that characterise so much of Lawrencea€?s work. David Game gives particular attention to the four novels and one novella published between 1920 and 1925, what Game calls Lawrencea€?s 'Australian period,' shedding new light on Lawrencea€?s attitudes towards Australia in general and, more specifically, towards Australian Aborigines, women and colonialism. He revisits key aspects of Lawrencea€?s development as a novelist and thinker, including the influence of Darwin and Lawrencea€?s rejection of eugenics, Christianity, psychoanalysis and science. While Game concentrates on the Australian novels such as Kangaroo and The Boy in the Bush, he also uncovers the Australian elements in a range of other works, including Lawrencea€?s last novel, Lady Chatterleya€?s Lover. Lawrence lived in Australia for just three months, but as Game shows, it played a significant role in his quest for a way of life that would enable regeneration of the individual in the face of what Lawrence saw as the moral collapse of modern industrial civilisation after the outbreak of World War I.

David Game is a Visiting Fellow at the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.