Lawrence: Introductions & Reviews

book Reviews ary" subjectivity in the late nineteenth century. Parrinder details the failure of Allen's last pet scientific theory, yet traces its influence not just into Allen's late fiction but also the work of Wells. John Lucas concludes his essay by remarking that "most of Allen's considerable output... has disappeared from view.... But it can be made to reappear as a perfectly acceptable form of writing to the moment, providing of course we know how to make the moment itself reappear." With Morton's bibliographical work and essay collections like this, Allen has been the vehicle for helping us to understand the particular economic and cultural resonances of the professional man of letters. Journalism, because it is ephemeral, diffused, often anonymised and scattered across the archive, has too often dropped out of this portrait. Recovery like this changes cultural histories. All the same, it still feels slightly weird that Allen has received so much attention. Perhaps the real "scandal" is that no one has yet done this act of recovery for lateVictorian professionals who were far more important and exerted far more influence than Allen. There really ought to be equivalent work on the similar polymath Andrew Lang: the outstanding example of a largely successful jack of all trades, who was at the core of literary journalism for over twenty years, shaping many literary careers. One could name numerous other significant figures: W. T Stead or Israel Zangwill spring to mind. I suppose this shows the advantage of having a passionate bibliographic advocate to reconvene a scattered body of work, yet it still feels like the current Allen revival is a slight distortion of his actual importance in the late-Victorian period. ROGER LUCKHURST Birbeck College, University of London Lawrence: Introductions Si Reviews D. H. Lawrence. Introductions and Reviews. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. cviii + 616 pp. $160.00 D. H. LAWRENCE'S unorthodox but compelling gift as an informed critic and intelligent reader remains well established with the deservedly high reputation accorded Studies in Classic American Literature. Now Cambridge University Press further confirms his talent for literary analysis and persuasive evaluation with the long-awaited publication of Lawrence's Introductions and Reviews, edited by N. H. Reeve and John Worthen. This is a large collection that wisely precludes those intriguing eighteen introductory essays and prefaces that Lawrence wrote for his own works of fiction and poetry; such omission makes sense in light of the editors' desire to display Lawrence's creative imag459 ELT 49 : 4 2006 ination and critical faculties engaged with a wide range of work by other poets, novelists, and cultural commentators. The volume contains a comprehensive, bio-bibliographical introduction of eighty pages by the editors—an impressive essay that scrupulously contextualizes the forty-nine items organized from 1911 to 1930, discussing each of them from the illuminating perspective of "a literary professional who regularly wrote in support of work in which he believed," and from the vantage point of probing research that persuasively "outlines the literary contacts of Lawrence's career which led him to doing such work." Most of the essays come from the 1920s, a period in Lawrence's life when his monetary situation was improved slightly by regular reviewing assignments from journals and newspapers , often prompted by editors and/or acquaintances desiring appropriate prefaces, reviews, and related articles. In this post-war decade of his established but controversial status as a writer, Lawrence's opinions on other artists and works become more emphatic and committed, just as his doctrinal vision and aesthetic principles develop with more confidence and clarity through the turbulent last years of his life. The sixteen introductions by Lawrence in this collection are highlighted by the longest and most famous essay, "Memoir of Maurice Magnus ," from Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion. Enough has been written by others on this extraordinary work to demonstrate its brilliance as cathartic art and its power as a moving and strangely obsessive piece of empathy and insight. The memoir paradoxically creates in Magnus a character of novelistic amplitude out of a deeply flawed fop who belongs to the props and pretensions of...