Tag Archives: D.H. Lawrence

Was there an ‘Edwardian Age’, and was it ‘great’?

When I began to read George and Kittie Calderon’s archive for my biography of them both, I little thought I would be drawn deeper and deeper into the question of ‘Edwardianism’. Yet I instantly felt as I read George’s letters … Continue reading

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Guest post by Damian Grant: D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’

‘All feelings belong to the body, and are only recognized by the mind.’ This statement by Lawrence can be taken as a categorical refutation of another manner of presenting human beings in fiction, one which was touched on by Patrick … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 18

8 August I introduced this summer’s ‘Edwardian Return’ series of posts on 4 June, but it really kicked in with Alison’s guest post ‘Edwardian grandmothers’, which as I write has been up for a week and has another to go. … Continue reading

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‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’: Fragments of a response

When I read the novel for the first time, I was bemused by the in-your-face tone of the narrator, who is even given to exclamatory comments: ‘But that is how men are!’ — ‘But Emma said No!’ — ‘Yes, she … Continue reading

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Guest post by Damian Grant: ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’

This nineteenth-century engraving of Florizel and Perdita does indeed make them look — to use Lady Chatterley/Connie’s dismissive phrase about the Elizabethans — somewhat ‘upholstered’. In all the excitement — which has never quite subsided — about the sexual explicitness … Continue reading

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Lady with little dog/Gamekeeper with spaniel

  Our guest posts on Women in Love opened an admirable exchange of Comments about all sorts of aspects of Lawrence’s work. I think there was a feeling, however, that we were left with an elephant in the room: Lady … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 14

1 February I received an email from Sam1 (Russia) in a Moscow hospital. His whole family has gone down with COVID. The others are coping with it at home, but he was rapidly losing lung capacity and had to be … Continue reading

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Some Calderonian footnotes to ‘Women in Love’

George Calderon was public-school, Oxford, backed by his wife’s unearned income, rather patriotic, perceived as conservative; D.H. Lawrence was a miner’s son, self-supporting and often penurious, rather oikophobic, perceived as revolutionary. What could they possibly have had in common? They … Continue reading

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D.H. Lawrence’s ‘christology’

This post is dedicated to the memory of JOHN POLKINGHORNE scientist-theologian 16 October 1930 – 9 March 2021 My thanks know no end to John Pym, Damian Grant and Laurence Brockliss for their superb posts on Lawrence’s Women in Love, … Continue reading

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Guest post by Laurence Brockliss: The Historian, Middle-Class Marriage, and ‘Women in Love’

I have always been puzzled by Tolstoy’s apodictic statement about happy and unhappy marriages at the beginning of Anna Karenina. How on earth did he know? Even today when the state and the media have penetrated deeply into our private … Continue reading

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Guest post by Damian Grant: ‘Women in Love’ — the novel as prophetic book

Lawrence always reminded the novel of its promise to offer something new. In his essays, where he insists that the novel ‘has got to present us with new, really new feelings, a whole line of new emotion, which will get … Continue reading

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Guest post by John Pym: ‘Women in Love’ and Glenda Jackson’s Oscar

In London in the 1970s and 80s I used to review movies for the British Film Institute’s Monthly Film Bulletin. That serious, no-frills journal, founded in 1934, aimed to cover every feature film released in UK cinemas. Some of the … Continue reading

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‘Hurtler’ Brangwen, woman in love

Let me explain what lies behind the next three instalments of Calderonia, which are distinguished guest posts taking us up to 8 March and beyond. As part of our lockdown season of old films, Alison and I watched a DVD … Continue reading

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The Editor-in-Chief

  It is a truth universally forgotten until too late, that as soon as we call a kettle black we start turning into a pot. I know too much about Constance Garnett, her husband Edward and his father Richard. There … Continue reading

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Far End draws closer

On 26 January I blogged about the house Far End at Kingham in Oxfordshire, which I had heard about for the first time from Mrs Mary Lowe, whom we traced as the copyright holder for unpublished works of the American … Continue reading

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Plum pie in the sky

I was intending to post about this subject in February, but my attention wandered and the relevant newspaper cuttings got buried. I am very glad that I put it off, as I have now read this recently reprinted book, which … Continue reading

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