Description
Here Love Ends: The Conflicts of Frieda and D.H. Lawrence by John Worthen is an enquiry into the transformations in Lawrence’s life and writing which took place between 1913 and 1917. Set alongside his relationship with Frieda Weekley, as revealed by letters and memoirs, his writing (like the first version of Women in Love) shows a Lawrence bedevilled by conflicts within and without: in his marriage to Frieda and because of the start of the First World War, in 1914; by the suppression of The Rainbow in 1915; and during his time in Cornwall with Frieda, Mansfield and Murry in 1916.
Worthen shows how Murry’s biographical accounts of Lawrence are not as trustworthy as previous biographies assume; he also probes the evidence for Lawrence’s now-notorious assault on Frieda in 1916, arguing that Mansfield’s letters reveal a very different reality. The book concludes with the breakdown of Lawrence’s friendships with Mansfield and Murry and a reading of his 1918-21 novel Aaron’s Rod, with which the sun sets on love and marriage as a major theme in his work. Here Love Ends, indeed.
About the Author
John Worthen is a biographer and historian who worked as Professor of D. H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham from 1994-2003. He is the author of critically-acclaimed biographies of D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Robert Schumann and William Wordsworth. Most recently, he has published books on Frieda Lawrence, Henry Marten and Johannes Brahms (which is appearing in 2026).
Endorsements and Reviews
Worthen, author of the first volume of the Cambridge Biography of D.H. Lawrence and of the composite biography, wears his considerable learning lightly in this illuminating new take on Lawrence and ‘the four’ friends who came together and grew part in the years of the Great War. Required reading for readers and students of Lawrence, and of Mansfield, Here Love Ends is also a story of life during wartime that illuminates the relationship between Lawrence and Frieda and the no less formative yet fractious relationship between life and art which Lawrence explores in his own writing. Worthen is an expert if not an eye witness to the events his book so vividly recreates. Professor Lee Jenkins, School of English, University College, Read the full endorsement here.
