Customer Reviews

D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage

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This book won the Whitbread prize in the U.K.-and deservedly so. It is a thoroughly researched, vivid and well written portrait of a brilliant miner's son writing against a death sentence he would never acknowledge-tuberculosis. After assisting the death of his all-important mother, Lawrence was supported by a wife whom he stole from another man (actually, she had him in bed within 20 minutes of meeting him, in her then-husband's house, too.) Freida was highly sexed and also almost compulsively unfaithful to him. They had dreadful fights, but somehow never actually split up. Brings alive the hothouse intellectual atmosphere of the Fabians, Freidians and Edwardian England, and the awful (and for Lawrence personally humiliating) cultural oppression of both Britain and America in the teens and twenties. You also get to travel around the world with the couple-Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Ceylon, Australia, Taos N.M., and Mexico, meeting the famous and infamous as you go. And with many well-chosen excerpts from Lawrence's letters, poetry and novels, you get a level of understanding of where his books came from which is very helpful in appreciating them. And him. I made the mistake of taking this book to Las Vegas. I didn't do any gambling.

Maddox's biography of Lawrence provides a thorough, engaging and thoughtful analysis of the artist's life and work through a lens trained on his relationships with his wife and the other women and men who figured prominently in the shaping of his personality and, by extension, his literary legacy. While revealing the warts-and-all ugliness of Lawrence's frequent rages and his verbal, physical and fictional abusiveness toward those near him, the narrative reaches for and often achieves a tenuous balance that simultaneously acknowledges and deflects (or dampens) criticism of Lawrence, leaving us with a portrait of a very conflicted human when one could just as easily see a monster. In that regard, the book is rich in detail, but one has to wonder about the scale on which the facts are weighed and measured, particularly in light of such breezily passed over statements as "Frieda and Ravagli bought a house near Galveston, at Port Isabel, Texas . . ." when those two cities are about as close to each other as Boston is to Baltimore. From a great height, perhaps one could view Lawrence as Maddox does, but if one had to put on shoes and walk the same path, similar conclusions are doubtful.

gossipy fluff from the distorted view-point of the politically correct dogma. Lawrence and Frieda were far more complex personalities (naturally troubled, but which real marriage is not?); for best portrayal of Lawrence and his marital roller coaster ride with Frieda, read Richard Aldington. One of the best biographies ever. Lawrence's best novels also offer a wealth of clues to this famously stormy, larger-than-life marriage. What an amazing couple! To think that Frieda, coming from one the most famous German aristocratic families, left her loveless marriage and three kids, and eloped with the war-resisting nearly penniless miner's son who will incidentally turn into one of the great authors of the 20th century!

This is a second rate, sometimes mean-spirited, gossipy book. Not for someone interested in the intricacies of Lawrence's real marriage.

This is the first biography on D.H.Lawrence I have read and I enjoyed it very much. Having not read anything else on him I can't say whether it is gossipy or not. I did not get the impression of it being mean spirited but I think she was less kind to Frieda in the second half of the book. I feel the author did a great job of paralleling the author's life and work. Overall, I feel this was a good book for me start to learn about D.H. Lawrence and his amazing albeit short life.