Book Review of D. H. Lawrence’s Australia: Anxiety at the Edge of Empire, by David Game

Abstract

Preconceptions of another country can take hold of an artist’s imagination – as ‘America’ did Kafka’s and Lorca’s – but who knew that D. H. Lawrence developed a comprehensive idea of ‘Australia’ long before his one hundred-day visit? Or how central that was to his later work? The objective of David Game, Honorary Lecturer at the Australian National University, is modestly expressed: to ‘throw new light on the significance of [Lawrence's] overall engagement with Australia – its place in his life and art’ (7). He does much more in a work of major scholarship.