First edition thus, trade issue. The poet, novelist, and biographer Richard Aldington (1892-1962) had co-founded the Imagist Movement in 1912 with the American Poets Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (known by her initials as ‘H.D.’, whom he would marry the following year). Aldington soon established himself in British pre-war literary circles and in 1914 he met D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) – ‘the modern novelist he most admired’ (ODNB) – who would become a friend and have an important influence on Aldington’s writing. In 1928 Aldington left England for France and in the autumn of that year, while staying with D.H. and Frieda Lawrence on the Mediterranean island of Port Cros, he began his first novel – the celebrated anti-war book Death of a Hero (1929), which was judged ‘much the best of the English war books’ by George Orwell (quoted in C. Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography (Basingstoke and London, 1989), p. 128).

Aldington’s text was first published as D.H. Lawrence: An Indiscretion by the University of Washington Book Store in 1927, before it was then published in this edition with a prefatory ‘Note’ which comments that ‘[t]his brief and inevitably fragmentary impression of Lawrence was written three years ago. I knew, of course, that he was seriously threatened by the disease which ultimately killed him, but I did not know how near to his death he was even then. For so many years he fought so gallantly for life that I could scarcely think of him as mortal. I found much to quarrel about with him when he was alive, but I think of him alive and dead as one of the most brave, splendid and vital influences of my own life and of his time’ (p. [7]). The ‘Note’ concludes with the words ‘[Lawrence] was not wholly displeased by this essay, and that is sufficient excuse for its publication now’ (loc. cit.). Aldington would go on to edit Lawrence’s Selected Poems in 1932, provide introductions to new editions of Lawrence’s works, and write D.H. Lawrence: Portrait of a Genius, but ... (1950), ‘the important first biography of Lawrence’ (ODNB). D.H. Lawrence was revised and reprinted as D.H. Lawrence: An Appreciation by Penguin Books in 1950.

The first edition of D.H. Lawrence was issued in two forms: the trade issue in wrappers (as here) and a limited edition of 260 signed copies on large paper, of which 250 were for sale. This copy is from the library of the noted bibliophile and collector Stephen Keynes – the son of the bibliographer Sir Geoffrey Keynes and a great-grandson of Charles Darwin – who was the founder and chairman of the Charles Darwin Trust, and a member of the Roxburghe Club.

J.C. Cowan, D.H. Lawrence: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings about him, 357; A. Kershaw, Bibliography of the Works of Richard Aldington from 1915 to 1948, 41.

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