D. H. Lawrence Cambridge Edition

BOOK REVIEWS Most of the problems that I find with this book, however, are not in its conceptual framework nor in its conclusions but in its execution. The Apocalyptic World of D. H. Lawrence reads at times luce a doctoral dissertation, particularly in the direct quotation that Fjagesund finds necessary to support fairly basic ideas. For example, in explaining the process of secularization, he cites Alan Gilbert as his source for one of the main forces behind this process, "the popularization of what was often called 'the scientific spirit/ " Should such generally accepted interpretations need the support of long direct quotations? Editing is also weak, in particular of misplaced or dangling modifiers (e.g., "Studying Lawrence and the literature he read, these problems....") and often artificial transitions between sections, suggesting that the material has not been fuUy synthesized. There are frequent digressions, for example, in the final chapter's discussion of the connections between Lady Chatterley and Knut Hamsun's novel Pan, as if Fjagesund were incorporating every one of his reading notes into the final text. Nevertheless, The Apocalyptic World of D. H. Lawrence has much to offer, particularly in this last decade of the twentieth century. Lydia Blanchard Southwest Texas State University D. H. Lawrence Cambridge Edition D. H. Lawrence. The Fox/The Captain's Doll/The Ladybird. Dieter Mehl, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xlviii + 307 pp. $89.95 SOME GENERIC OBSERVATIONS about The Cambridge Edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence are in my review of the volume Movements in European History, printed in the D. H. Lawrence Review, 22 (1990). There is no reason to repeat here at any length my views on such matters as the absence of a complete list of pre-publication readings in the manuscripts (i.e., readings deleted and/or revised within the manuscript), the absence of a descriptive list of editions, the regularization of accidentals, and the beauty and superb design of the edition. In addition to evaluating the particular features of this volume of fiction, what I would like to stress in the present review is admiration for the primary editorial principle: The Cambridge edition aims to provide texts which are as close as can now be determined to those he would have wished to see printed" (vii), At a time when powerful schools of editing theory have dipped into the wispy provocativeness of current 387 ELT 36:3 1993 theoretical questioning of the legitimacy of the author's prerogative, this declaration is refreshing and encouraging. This volume of the Cambridge Edition of Lawrence comprises three stories each of which was developed from a previous short story: The Fox (The Fox"—written 1918, published in Hutchinson's Story Magazine , November 1920); The Captain's Doll (The Mortal Coil"—written 1913, published in Seven Arts, July 1917); The Ladybird (The Thimble "—written 1915, published in Seven Arts, March 1917). Only The Fox uses much of its earlier version. The novelettes, as Lawrence called them, were written in late 1920 and 1921, at much the same time he was revising the short stories that were published in 1922 in England, My EngL·rιd. The novelette The Fox was printed in the Dial, in 1922, before the three-story volume appeared, in 1923 (March, in London, as The Ladybird; April, in the U.S., as The Captain's Doll). Lawrence's agents were not able to place the other two novelettes in magazines before the book's publication; the principal reason was the stories' length, which prevented ready placement in a single issue. These extremely interesting narratives have a commonality in their Lawrentian stress on the equivalences of darkness and death and sexuality, and in their intense depictions of the necessity that women hold themselves ready to be slavishly obedient in marriage whether or not 'love" is present in the relationship. This obedience might be starkly insisted on by the man (The Captain's Doll), or it might be obscurely felt by both the male and female whüe courting (The Fox). Its most striking form in this volume is the agreement to maintain a formal marriage whose wife and husband equaUy acknowledge that her...