The inadequacy of Moore’s biography has long been recognized, and the need for a new life of one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century was obvious. His pedantic approach was unsuitable to Lawrence, and he never abandoned his inappropriately defensive attitude toward his subject.
Like Carlos Baker’s Hemingway and Joseph Blotner’s Faulkner, Moore’s books are encyclopedic rather than analytic. Though these works were turgid, graceless, and dull, and their faults magnified with each successive edition, they have dominated Lawrence biography for the last 40 years. Lawrence (1954, revised 1962) and The Priest of Love: A Life of D.H. Lawrence: His Life and Works (1951), The Intelligent Heart: The Story of D.H. Between 19 the late Harry Moore published four revised and enlarged versions (none of them with footnotes) of his biography of Lawrence: D. With Lawrence, as with Hemingway, there were many memoirs but only one scholarly biography. She read my Hemingway immediately, offered an advance five times higher than I had received from Harper & Row and, when I asked for more, handsomely topped it up by one third. I chose Carol Janeway because she was English and therefore, in my experience, less inclined than Americans to interfere with an author’s manuscript. He replied that he was not personally interested in Lawrence (a strange response) and suggested three alternate editors. I sent Gordon Lish a two-page proposal, discussing the need for a new biography, my qualifications, and specific ideas about the book. Powers, Denis Donoghue) published with them. I had always been impressed by the quality and appearance of Knopf’s books, and several of my literary friends (Phillip Knightley, J.F.
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There were serious problems with Harper & Row when my Hemingway was going through the press-the editor seemed comatose, the lawyer constantly broke his word and delayed publication for five months-so I canceled my option clause and was free to place my life of Lawrence with a different publisher.
I planned to continue my nun-like devotion with D.H. Lawrence. A witty English reviewer of my life of Hemingway called me the Mother Theresa of biographers, constantly attempting to resurrect literary lepers like Wyndham Lewis and Hemingway, and make them palatable to the public.
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