D.H. Lawrence

John Worthen, a scholar who has spent much of his career on Lawrence, approaches the writer's life as a sustained revolt against his upbringing, his society, his homeland and his own physical nature. Worthen argues this resistance ran through Lawrence's whole life rather than appearing in a single phase, and he connects the people around Lawrence with the characters he invented.

The book traces Lawrence's fraught bond with his mother, his early friendships and romances, and his exchanges with the writers, painters and intellectuals of his day. Central to the story is his intense relationship with Frieda von Richthofen Weekley, a German noblewoman with an open attitude toward sex who abandoned her English husband and three children to be with him. Their partnership was stormy and at times marked by infidelity.

The couple's wandering existence, frequently short of money, is followed closely as Lawrence searches for a climate and setting where his imagination could flourish and, once he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, where he could protect his health. The source text is cut off before the account is complete.