Mark Kinkead-Weekes's tome, the second of a planned three- part study of the life of D.H. Lawrence, is an incredible accomplishment. Following 1991's The Early Years: 1885-1912 by John Worthen, Triumph to Exile: 1912-1922 continues a comprehensive telling of Lawrence's life, covering the period betweem his flight from England and his departure for Naples. Fans of Lawrence will find this series a window on the writer's life worth looking through; scholars and more general readers of biography should appreciate the archaeological care with which details have been unearthed and the theoretical sophistication of their display.
New York Times Book Review, Walter Kendrick
The biographer's art entails digesting sources, not just paraphrasing them, and constructing a portrait that ... convinces the reader that the names on all those dust jackets also belonged to a creature of flesh and blood.... The classic biographies do exactly that ... Triumph to Exile does not; in fact, it refuses to try.
Review
"This is a superb biography, a work of impeccable scholarship that includes an impressive component of notes, appendices, chronological tables, and family trees, as well as complete lists of Lawrence's prose and verse writing in the relevant period. Of particular interest is the skillful way in which Kinkead-Weekes sets out the historic meeting of Lawrence and Bertrand Russell and the reasons--cultural, political, literary--for its disappointing course. Also noteworthy is the discussion of Lawrence's slippery sexual identity and its manifestation in his various works. A wonderful achievement." The Virginia Quarterly Review
"...an exhaustively detailed account that, in its methodical recording of virtually all Lawrence's known actions--almost a week-by-week log of his whereabouts, the company he kept, the words he uttered, the debts he owed and paid--aims to convey `some sense at least of what it may have been like to live as Lawrence did.'...In addition to tracking Lawrence's inexorable progress from `triumph to exile,' Kinkead-Weekes provides very ample discussions of all of his writings during the period....Readers of modern literature will doubtless welcome this carefully executed `middle' relay in the ongoing Cambridge biographical marathon that has already added much to our knowledge of one of the century's indispensable voices." Magill's Literary Annual
"...covers the 10 central years of Lawrence's amazingly brief life (he died at 45) and chronicles in meticulous detail the doings, meanderings, and amours of the writer and his circle. As a repository of factual scholarship, Kinkead-Weekes's monumental biography is clearly a well from which readers and scholars will be drawing insight for years to come." Washington Post Book World
Book Description
This second volume of the acclaimed Cambridge biography of D. H. Lawrence covers the years 1912-22, the period in which he forged his reputation as one of the greatest and most controversial writers of the twentieth century. The story opens as the twenty-six-year-old Lawrence travels to Germany with Frieda Weekley, the wife of a university professor and mother of three small children. In his baggage on that prosaic cross-channel ferry was a draft of Sons and Lovers, the first of a group of novels with which Lawrence was to revolutionize English fiction over the next decade. This meticulously researched volume opens a new perspective on the central period of Lawrence's life and literary career. Drawing on memoirs, oral recollections, and unpublished manuscript material, it deals squarely with the vexing issue of Lawrence and Frieda's personal relations--issues that have more often been gossiped about than scrupulously examined. Above all it reveals the triumph of Lawrence's art during a decade of extraordinary trials in which, against all reasonable odds, the coal-miner's son established himself as the most innovative and notorious novelist of his generation.
D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 2 FROM THE PUBLISHER
This volume of the Cambridge Biography begins with Lawrence and Frieda Weekley on the Ostend ferry in 1912, and ends in 1922 on a liner header for Ceylon. Frieda did not start with the intention of leaving her first husband and their children, but these ten years see the forging of a marriage that lasted Lawrence's lifetime. The decade sees the 'un-Englishing' of Lawrence: first through living in Italy and Germany before the Great War, and still more by his fervent opposition to that 'nightmare', and by the adverse reception of his work. In the war years he lost his audience, and then his home when he was expelled from Cornwall on suspicion of being a spy. Poor, and alienated, he became determined to emigrate, and in 1919 he did so - finding a new life and vitality in mainland Italy, Capri and Sicily, before moving out from Europe too, a restless traveller, as well as an adventurer in the mind. Lawrence explored his own experience in his writing with remarkable depth, courage and imagination. This biography tells the writing life too, as never before, tracing the illuminating relations between man and manuscript, without confusing life and art. Drawing on new information from the Cambridge Editions of the Letters and Works, and original research, fresh light is shed on questions of Lawrence's sexuality, health, quarrels and friendships, which have been more often gossiped or theorised about than scrupulously examined.
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