Living at the Edge by Michael Squires
Vividly told and meticulously researched from primary sources, this double biography of D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda von Richthofen is the first to draw fully on Frieda's unpublished letters and on interviews with people who knew her well. It explores their collision with an industrial world they hated and chronicles the stormy relationship between husband and wife. The strong sexual vitality that inspired Lawrence's art brought both joy and anguish to his marriage. Living at the Edge follows the separate lives of Lawrence and Frieda up to their first meeting in 1912. Tracing their new life together, it depicts their grateful escape from the English Midlands; their discovery of exotic places where they made temporary homes - Italy, Cornwall, Australia, New Mexico and Mexico; Lawrence's courageous success in recreating the simple life on ranches near Taos, New Mexico, where she died in 1956. At the centre of their story is Lawrence's literary career. Biographers Squires and Talbot see Lawrence's major novels - The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley's Lover - as a fresh way to understand his turbulent life. They reveal the extreme care with which he rewrote his personal experience to satisfy his deepest needs, and they introduce the many influential people who entered the Lawrences' lives and work. The rich materials from Frieda's letters reveal a different Lawrence - more difficult as a man but more interesting as an artist; they also reveal a different Frieda - more vibrant as a woman, more substantial as a companion.
'The most evocatively detailed narrative yet written about the marriage of DH. and Frieda Lawrence. This unusual double biography offers eye-opening new perspectives on Lawrence's writings as it chronicles the troubled but passionate union of this fascinating couple whom we knew perhaps less well than we thought.' Dennis Jackson, past editor of the D.H. Lawrence Review 'A fresh, fair-minded, richly textured life of the English novelist and his vibrant German wife.' Keith Cushman, past president of the D.H. Lawrence Society of North America
Michael Squires is a professor of English at Virginia Tech. A past president of the D.H. Lawrence Society of America and recipient of an award for lifetime achievement in D.H. Lawrence studies, he is the author and editor of many books, including the Penguin edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Lynn K. Talbot is professor of Spanish at Roanoke College. They are husband and wife, and together they are compiling and editing the complete letters of Frieda Lawrence.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780709057253 |
| ISBN 10 | 0709057253 |
| Title | Living at the Edge |
| Author | Michael Squires |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | The Crowood Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2002-08-30 |
| Number of pages | 502 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |