Book dossier

Kangaroo

by D. H. Lawrence

Kangaroo is D. H. Lawrence's eighth novel, set in Australia. He wrote the first draft in just forty-five days while living south of Sydney, in 1922, and revised in three months later in New Mexico. The descriptions of the country are among the most vivid and sympathetic ever penned, and the book fuses lightly disguised autobiography with an exploration of political ideas at an immensely personal level. His anxiety about the future of democracy, caught as it was in the turbulent cross currents of fascism and socialism, is only partly appeased by his vision of a new bond of comradeship between men based on their unique separateness. Lawrence's alter ego Richard Somers departs for America to continue his search. . Based on a collation of the manuscript, typescripts and first editions, this text of Kangaroo is closest to what Lawrence would have expected to see in print. There is a full Textual apparatus of variants, a comprehensive Introduction giving the background and history of composition and publication and a summary of contemporary reviewers' opinions. Explanatory notes elucidate the many geographical, political and literary allusions in the text; there are three maps and an appendix detailing the Australian locations.