Book News: How D.H. Lawrence established a writing career

D. H. Lawrence and the Literary Marketplace: The Early Writings

BY ANNALISE GRICE

Edinburgh UP, 2021

ISBN: 9781474458009

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-d-h-lawrence-and-the-literary-marketplace.html

Despite the materialist turn in modernist studies, the extent and depth of D. H. Lawrence’s engagement with the literary marketplace has not been considered. The labelling of him as a working class ‘genius’ has concealed the question of how he became a published writer. Analyzing the literary marketplace of the long Edwardian period, this book assesses the circumstances for becoming an author at this time, examining Lawrence’s changing conceptions of what kind of writer he wanted to be and who he wanted to write for. It reconsiders the significance of Lawrence’s literary mentors Ford Madox Hueffer and Edward Garnett and recovers several figures (including Violet Hunt and Ezra Pound) whose significance for Lawrence’s career has been underestimated. The book evaluates how Lawrence’s work was marketed and received by the reading public in Britain and America, examining publishing houses (including Heinemann, Duckworth, T. Fisher Unwin and Mitchell Kennerley) and literary journals and magazines (such as the New Age, the English Review, Madame and Forum).

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"Grice provides a finely-tuned assessment of how Lawrence shaped his identity as a writer early on, through strategies and negotiations, and assistance from professional and social networks. For a comprehensive account of how Lawrence developed his talents and attained legitimacy in the literary marketplace, this book is key." – Judith Ruderman, Duke University

Annalise Grice is senior lecturer in English literature at Nottingham Trent University. She specializes in the work of D. H. Lawrence and the literary marketplace during the long twentieth century; her research interests extend to the professionalization of women’s writing, the Edwardian and early modernist sex novel, literary censorship, May Sinclair and Violet Hunt, Marie Stopes and literary representations of women's reproductive rights.