I recently read Richard Owen's book about Hemmingway, a very tough person to write about as so much about him was untrue. D. H. Lawrence is the other end of the spectrum, Owen has a huge amount of info and letters to wade through, the job becomes making sense of it all and putting it down in a way that flows nicely. Owen has done a fantastic job, the book is very interesting, well written putting the letters in chronological order and including the minimum of filler, letting the letters speak for themselves.

Before starting this I re-read Lady Chatterley's Lover and I'm glad I did that because I learnt so much from this book, a real insight into the man who wrote this classic. First I had no idea he wrote the book whilst in Italy and his relationship with his wife Frieda and personal issues really come across in the story. Venice gets quite rough treatment by Connie Chatterley and you can see why from Lawrence's short time there.

Lawrence was an interesting character, he essentially pops over to Italy to stay for a while because of his poor health and he soon falls in love with the place. The gentle beauty and friendly locals made it the perfect place for a man fed up with the cold, damp and over populated Britain. His many letters to friends really show how important the place was to him, even when locals annoyed him he still loved the country. The book gives a decent account of those people in his life, I really enjoyed reading about Rina, her time in his life may not have long but her impact was great, she was mentioned in so many of his letters and had a character based on her.

This book does what all good biographies do, it makes me wanna go and pick up more of his books to read, where to start though as he wrote so much.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2020/10/08/dh-lawrence-in-italy-by-richard-owen/