Synopses & Reviews
Sydney Janet Kaplan builds a literary biography around the personal lives of John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield, and D. H. Lawrence, three writers who significantly shaped British modernism.
She recounts their relationship with other prominent modernists, including T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Mark Gertler, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Making use of Murry's unpublished journals and letters to Mansfield and Lawrence, and investigating their complex intertextuality, Kaplan adds compelling new layers to contemporary debates over the true genealogy of modernism, particularly the influence of literary coteries and savvy marketing strategies. She argues that we should reconsider Murry, once known as the best-hated man of letters, as a skilled circulator of ideas and reputations, and by approaching this history through the prism of intimate acquaintance, Kaplan prompts renewed discussion of topics as essential and varied the concept of genius, the question of the personal in an era of impersonality, the influence of psychoanalysis, and the rationale of twentieth-century confessionalism.
Synopsis
Centred on the relationship between the personal lives of the writers John Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield, and D. H. Lawrence and the works they produced this intriguing study develops a portrait of a circle of writers who significantly influenced the development of modernism in Britain.
Synopsis
'A significant contribution to modernist studies, Professor Kaplan's timely investigation of the Mansfield-Murry-Lawrence triangle illuminates their previously under-researched creative relationships. Her ability to convey the humour and drama of her subject and her fine scholarship are equally engaging.'
Delia da Sousa Correa, Editor, Katherine Mansfield Studies
'We may have thought that pretty much everything had been garnered about that tangled triangle of D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Middleton Murry. Not so. After Kaplan, one is looking freshly, more deeply, at how these extraordinary personalities circled and feinted, landed their punches and reconciled. Most surprisingly, she makes her case for restoring Murry to his rightful place in that trio, free from the condescension that has obscured him for generations. Mansfield and Lawrence too emerge in a new light. What Kaplan does is to present a key moment in British Modernism as a vivid, living, personal exchange.'
Vincent O'Sullivan, Victoria University, Wellington and co-editor of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield
The relationship between the personal lives of writers and the works they produce is at the heart of this intriguing new study. In particular, it reconsiders the place of John Middleton Murry (1889-1957) in the development of literary modernism in Britain. Drawing on Murry's unpublished journals and long-forgotten novels, Circulating Genius examines his significance as a 'circulator' of ideas, reputations and critical positions in his roles of editor, literary critic, novelist, friend and lover and complicates the arguments of earlier biographers and critics about his relationships - both personal and professional - with Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence.
Synopsis
The relationship between the personal lives of writers and the works they produce is at the heart of this intriguing new study. In particular, it reconsiders the place of John Middleton Murry (1889-1957) in the development of literary modernism in Britain. Drawing on Murry's unpublished journals and long-forgotten novels, Circulating Genius examines his significance as a 'circulator' of ideas, reputations and critical positions in his roles of editor, literary critic, novelist, friend and lover and complicates the arguments of earlier biographers and critics about his relationships - both personal and professional - with Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence.
About the Author
Sydney Janet Kaplan is Professor of English at the University of Washington