D.H. Lawrence and His World

Harry T. Moore & Warren Roberts D.H. Lawrence and His World (1966)
Always room for one more biography of D.H. Lawrence, I guess, and this one made the cut because it's full of photographs I'd never seen before, which really helps refine one's impression of the man and his world - as promised by the title. Additionally, being more visually orientated than usual, the text is snappy and to the point, distilling the usual four-hundred page account into just over a quarter of that, so what it may lack in detail is compensated by a more coherent summary of Lawrence's life as a whole. This is the third biography I've read of the man, and I've found plenty that I missed through other versions having their noses pressed up so much closer to the screen, figuratively speaking.

One minor reason for my enduring interest in this writer is how my own life seems to have echoed his, at least geographically speaking, and entirely by accident. We were both born in the Midlands, gravitated to south London, then Mexico City and Oaxaca, and then the American southwest give or take a few hundred miles. The patterns are only loosely parallel with plenty that doesn't match up, but are at least close enough for me to have raised an eyebrow at instances of having stayed in the same hotel and suchlike; and I feel it affords me a certain perspective on at least some of what he wrote, which this biography underscores.