and... and... and...

This volume collects together the introductions and reviews for which D. H. Lawrence was responsible over the whole duration of his writing career, from 1911 to 1930: it includes the book review which was the last thing he ever wrote, in the Ad Astra Sanatorium in Vence. The forty-nine separate items include some of his most compelling literary productions: for example, the fascinating Memoir of Maurice Magnus of 1921–2, his only extended piece of biographical writing. The volume's Introduction not only outlines the literary contacts of Lawrence's career which led him to doing such work, but gives a fresh account of the life of a literary professional who regularly wrote in support of work in which he personally believed, and who also (rather surprisingly) wrote reviews of nearly thirty books. All the texts, including a number previously unpublished in Britain, have been edited and are supplied with extensive explanatory notes.

Written in D. H. Lawrence's most productive period, 'Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious' (1921) and 'Fantasia of the Unconscious' (1922) were undertaken initially in response to psychoanalytic criticism of his novel Sons and Lovers. They soon developed more generally to propose an alternative to what Lawrence perceived as the Freudian psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious and the incest motive. The essays also develop his ideas about the upbringing and education of children, about marriage, and about social and even political action. Lawrence described them as 'this pseudo-philosophy of mine which was deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The absolute need one has for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one's experiences as a writer and as a man'. These conclusions form an illuminating guide to his works and therein lies their peculiar value.

D. H. Lawrence's best-known late fictions are presented in this volume, which is dominated by two powerful novellas, The Virgin and the Gipsy and The Escaped Cock (also known as The Man Who Died). In the first, a young woman from a restrictive English rectory discovers further dimensions to life through her contact with a gipsy; in the second, an unnamed man - in fact Lawrence's vision of Christ - is resurrected and escapes from his tomb. Both novellas deal with the themes of escape and sexual awakening, which are echoed in the four short stories and three fragments also collected here. This edition restores Lawrence's final texts, before the changes introduced by censorship, mistakes in transmission and various other forms of interference, with variants recorded. The introduction traces the history of the stories, while the notes offer help with allusions, contexts and other points of potential difficulty or interest.