Product Description

D. H. Lawrence left England for the first time in May 1912, and began almost immediately to record his reactions to foreign cultures. He wrote a series of travel articles intended for newspapers, two of which are published here for the first time after having been rejected as too anti-German in the tense pre-war atmosphere. In 1915 he amplified some of these essays and wrote others for Twilight in Italy (1916), his first travel book. Profoundly charged by the disorienting anxieties of the War, these essays evince a confidence and intellectual daring which take them well beyond the bounds of the conventional travel sketch. All are published in this first critical edition of his 1912-16 essays, together with his eerily prophetic article, ‘With the Guns’, written upon the outbreak of war in 1914.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1403430 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 404 pages

Book Jacket
"Twilight in Italy" contains a Lawrence particularly true to himself. A book which cannot be read as an ordinary travel book, for Lawrence is again seeking the core of truth, and his voyage is philosophic, as well as a symbolic and sensuous one." --Anais Nin

D.H. Lawrence left England for the first time in May 1912 and wrote about his experiences in Germany, the Alps and Italy in Twilight in Italy, his first travel book. Some of the essays describe intriguing personalities or amusing and often slightly ironic incidents, as in "Hail in the Rhineland" and "In Fortified Germany." Others contain intensely meditative passages on the destiny and history of man. The threat of approaching war, however, forms a powerful underlying theme and "With the Guns", his eerily prophetic article, is also included in this collection.

Customer Reviews

Long-winded in the Alps
Although it is wonderful that Lawrence went to Italy and wrote these books, some of them are very hard to read because they are so little about Italy and so much about Lawrence's philosophical ideas. He stretches it out in a very dogmatic fashion until one almost wishes to give up reading and many probably have. Some of the ideas are Zen-like, some are trite, and some, for instance his ideas about Hamlet, and some of his ideas about women, are embarrassingly wrong headed. The essays in this book are set around Lago di Garda and further north in the mountains where Lawrence, apparently quite the athlete in his early thirties, and a very shrewd judge of character, spent a summer walking high above the snow line. He comes across as a very amiable traveller in his early thirties, one whom it would have been a pleasure to have met along the road.