Product Description

This guide moves beyond the controversy surrounding Lady Chatterley's Lover to examine the prolific output of poetry, novels and non-fiction that made Lawrence a central figure in the Modernist movement.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #260324 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
'A lucid and remarkably comprehensive survey of Lawrence's life and work and of the extensive criticism devoted to his writings - an invaluable resource for all students of Lawrence, lay or professional.' - Peter Widdowson, University of Gloucestershire

From the Back Cover
So many questions surround the key figures in the English literary canon, but most books focus on one aspect of an authors life or work, or limit themselves to a single critical approach. The Complete Critical Guide to D.H. Lawrence is part of a unique series of comprehensive, user-friendly introductions which:
offer basic information on an authors life, contexts and works
outline the major critical issues surrounding the authors works, from the time they were written to the present
leave judgements up to you, by explaining the full range of often very different critical views and interpretations
offer guides to further reading in each area discussed.
This series has a broad focus but one very clear aim: to equip you with all the knowledge you need to make your own new readings of crucial literary texts.

About the Author
Fiona Becket lectures in twentieth-century English literature at the University of Leeds. She is the author of D.H. Lawrence: The Thinker as Poet (1997).

Customer Reviews

Useful resource, mainly aimed at university students
D.H. Lawrence was a prolific writer of poems, plays, novels, travel-writing, essays, quasi-philosophy, and more besides. In this concise and authoritative book, Fiona Becket has provided a structured overview of Lawrence's work and the criticism surrounding it.

If you are student and taking a course on D.H. Lawrence, this book will be a valuable reference. It's probably best used as preparation for the beginning of a course as it covers pretty much everything, but it can also be used as a companion.

The first thing Becket does is to break Lawrence's oeuvre into component parts. She looks at the novels chronologically from the 'White Peacock' right through to 'The Plumed Serpent', giving a reader an idea of how Lawrence's attitudes, ideas and style of writing changed over time. Then she deals with the rest of Lawrence's output such as the poems and travel writing in separate sections.

Although Becket's treatment of the works is relatively brief, they are illuminating and packed with references to other critical studies. A great strength of her own style is the ability to keep a balance between general and specific and to keep things objective: Lawrence criticism often tends to provoke strong opinions and this clear-headed text controls them well.

The edition was compiled 2002, so bear in mind several studies may have slipped the net.

The main highlight of this book is the final section, dealing with the criticism of Lawrence's work. This is a superb introduction to the variety of debate the oeuvre has created and is very comprehensive. Again, the structuring is excellent at breaking things up into discrete sections: one deals with gender criticism, another psychoanalytic criticism, and so it goes. Once you've read this you will have a good idea at what you find interesting in the debates surrounding Lawrence's work. Again, bear in mind that there may have been significant additions left out of the book.

So, although this book has now aged a bit, I'd say it's still a solid companion to someone studying Lawrence's work. In reading it from cover to cover, you will be well prepared and informed to tackle writing an essay or joining a discussion. At times studying the work of a prolific writer can seem onerous due to the sheer scale of the writer's output: this book helps you to deal with that.