An enquiry into the transformations in Lawrence's life and writing which took place between 1913 and 1917. Set alongside his relationship with Frieda Weekley, as revealed by letters and memoirs, his writing (like the first version of Women in Love) shows a Lawrence bedevilled by conflicts within and without: in his marriage to Frieda and because of the start of the First World War, in 1914; by the suppression of The Rainbow in 1915; and during his time in Cornwall with Frieda, Mansfield and Murry in 1916.
Worthen shows how Murry's biographical accounts of Lawrence are not as trustworthy as previous biographies assume; he also probes the evidence for Lawrence's now-notorious assault on Frieda in 1916, arguing that Mansfield's letters reveal a very different reality.
The book concludes with the breakdown of Lawrence's friendships with Mansfield and Murry and a reading of his 1918-21 novel Aaron's Rod, with which the sun sets on love and marriage as a major theme in his work. Here Love Ends, indeed.
