Here Love Ends - by John Worthen (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Set alongside his relationship with Frieda Weekley, as revealed by letters and memoirs, his writing (like the first version of Women in Love) shows a Lawrence bedevilled by conflicts within and without: in his marriage to Frieda and because of the start of the First World War, in 1914; by the suppression of The Rainbow in 1915; and during his time in Cornwall with Frieda, Mansfield and Murry in 1916.

Worthen shows how Murry's biographical accounts of Lawrence are not as trustworthy as previous biographies assume; he also probes the evidence for Lawrence's now-notorious assault on Frieda in 1916, arguing that Mansfield's letters reveal a very different reality.

The book concludes with the breakdown of Lawrence's friendships with Mansfield and Murry and a reading of his 1918-21 novel Aaron's Rod, with which the sun sets on love and marriage as a major theme in his work. Here Love Ends, indeed.