Product Description
First published in 1930 to a storm of protest due to its frank approach, this biography of the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, deliberately seeks to shake the image of Burns as a romantic hero. It exposes the sexual misdemeanours, drinking bouts and waywardness that is often overlooked. The book also brings to life the personality of this man, showing him to be passionate, hard-living, generous, melancholic, morbid and triumphant.
About the Author
Catherine Carswell's (1879-1946) friendship with D.H. Lawrence was kindled by her favorable review of The White Peacock (1911). They met in 1914 and their relationship lasted until Lawrence's death in. In 1916 she and Lawrence exchanged manuscripts of Open the Door! and Women in Love. Her novel was completed in 1918 and won the Melrose Prize on publication in 1920. Her other novel, The Camomile, was published two years later, after which she devoted herself to The Life of Robert Burns, which made her name in 1930. This was quickly followed by a biography of Lawrence, The Savage Pilgrimage (1932). She worked with John Buchan's widow on his memorial anthology, The Clearing House (1946) and on her own autobiography, which was published, incomplete, as Lying Awake in 1950. Carswell died in Oxford at the age of 66.
