In the introduction to her 1958 selection of D. H. Lawrence’s letters, Diana Trilling complained that “so much a poet, he yet insists that we read him as a preacher.” This undeniable fact made a full appreciation of Lawrence’s imaginative writing rather problematic for many of his contemporaries, and even more so for posterity. The Lawrence scholar John Worthen begins his excellent new biography by informing us that the sage’s once titanic reputation has now diminished and that many English departments both in Britain and the United States have stopped teaching him altogether.[1] If this is so it constitutes an extremely speedy fall from grace: when I was a graduate student only twenty years ago, one could hardly avoid having to grapple with Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow at the very least.

Worthen ascribes this shift to changing political fashion, and quotes Ursula K. Le Guin as a representative modern voice: “He was a sexist and a racist, is there any argument?” she said flatly. But it is possible that Lawrence’s insistent self-identification as a preacher and the aggressive messianism with which he infused his writing and his persona have damaged his current standing at least as much as his now retrograde social views have done. Many readers who might eagerly respond to Lawrence’s unrivalled descriptive powers find themselves irritated and even disgusted with his ex cathedrapronouncements and fervent secular religiosity, and most of all with the web of eccentric theory he wove around all