You could describe D.H. Lawrence as the great multi-instrumentalist among the great writers of the twentieth century. He was a brilliant, endlessly controversial novelist who transformed, for better and for worse, the way we write about sex and emotions; he was a wonderful poet; he was an essayist of burning curiosity, expansive lyricism, odd humor, and radical intelligence, equaled, perhaps, only by Virginia Woolf. Here Geoff Dyer, one of the finest essayists of our day, draws on the whole range of Lawrence’s published essays to reintroduce him to a new generation of readers for whom the essay has become an important genre. We get Lawrence the book reviewer, writing about Death in Venice and welcoming Ernest Hemingway; Lawrence the travel writer, in Mexico and New Mexico and Italy; Lawrence the memoirist, depicting his strange sometime-friend Maurice Magnus; Lawrence the restless inquirer into the possibilities of the novel, writing about the novel and morality and addressing the question of why the novel matters; and, finally, the Lawrence who meditates on birdsong or the death of a porcupine in the Rocky Mountains. Dyer’s selection of Lawrence’s essays is a wonderful introduction to a fundamental, dazzling writer.

For the first time, all of Lawrence's travel writings are collected in one volume and amongst popular works such as 'Twilight in Italy' are to be found comparative rarities such as 'Introduction to the Memoirs of MM' as well as his writings on Europe and South America. Included in the collection is the novel 'Kangaroo' which, while strictly speaking not a piece of travel writing, nevertheless, gives a vivid account of the persecution which sent the Lawrences on their travels and is a fascinating portrait of Australia between the wars. David Herbert Lawrence was the son of a coal-miner and a mother from a family with middle-class aspirations. He was a poet, novelist, essayist and short story writer as well as one of the most consummate travel writers of the twentieth century.

This masterly work offers an exciting recreation of the life and times of British novelist D.H. Lawrence.