Description
Book SynopsisCentred on the relationship between the personal lives of the writers John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield, and D. H. Lawrence and the works they produced this intriguing study develops a portrait of a circle of writers who significantly influenced the development of modernism in Britain.
Trade ReviewA significant contribution to modernist studies, Professor Kaplan's timely investigation of the Mansfield-Murry-Lawrence triangle illuminates their previously under-researched creative relationships. Her ability to convey the humour and drama of her subject and her fine scholarship are equally engaging. -- Delia da Sousa Correa, Editor, Katherine Mansfield Studies We may have thought that pretty much everything had been garnered about that tangled triangle of D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Middleton Murry. Not so. After Kaplan, one is looking freshly, more deeply, at how these extraordinary personalities circled and feinted, landed their punches and reconciled. Most surprisingly, she makes her case for restoring Murry to his rightful place in that trio, free from the condescension that has obscured him for generations. Mansfield and Lawrence too emerge in an engagingly new light. What Kaplan does is to present a key moment in British Modernism as a vivid, living, personal exchange. This is good storytelling, as much as fine scholarship. -- Vincent O'Sullivan, Victoria University, Wellington, co-editor 'The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield' A significant contribution to modernist studies, Professor Kaplan's timely investigation of the Mansfield-Murry-Lawrence triangle illuminates their previously under-researched creative relationships. Her ability to convey the humour and drama of her subject and her fine scholarship are equally engaging. We may have thought that pretty much everything had been garnered about that tangled triangle of D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Middleton Murry. Not so. After Kaplan, one is looking freshly, more deeply, at how these extraordinary personalities circled and feinted, landed their punches and reconciled. Most surprisingly, she makes her case for restoring Murry to his rightful place in that trio, free from the condescension that has obscured him for generations. Mansfield and Lawrence too emerge in an engagingly new light. What Kaplan does is to present a key moment in British Modernism as a vivid, living, personal exchange. This is good storytelling, as much as fine scholarship.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. 'My Blundering Way of Learning': Murry's Still Life; 2. Still Life and Women in Love; 3. From Still Life to 'Bliss'; 4. 'A Furious Bliss'; 5. 'With Cannonballs for Eyes'; 6. 'The Coming Man and Woman'; 7. The Things We Are; 8. Circulating Mansfield; 9. Circulating Lawrence; 10.Circulating Murry; Bibliography; Index.
