Author(s): Frances Wilson

Literature | Biography and Memoir

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE'Frances Wilson writes books that blow your hair back. She makes Lawrence live and breathe, annoy and captivate you ... she conjures the past with such clarity and wit and flair that it feels utterly present' Katherine Rundell 'A brilliantly unconventional biography, passionately researched and written with a wild, playful energy' Richard HolmesD H Lawrence is no longer censored, but he is still on trial - and we are still unsure what the verdict should be, or even how to describe him. History has remembered him, and not always flatteringly, as a nostalgic modernist, a sexually liberator, a misogynist, a critic of genius, and a sceptic who told us not to look in his novels for 'the old stable ego', yet pioneered the genre we now celebrate as auto-fiction. But where is the real Lawrence in all of this, and how - one hundred years after the publication of Women in Love - can we hear his voice above the noise? Delving into the memoirs of those who both loved and hated him most, Burning Man follows Lawrence from the peninsular underworld of Cornwall in 1915 to post-war Italy to the mountains of New Mexico, and traces the author's footsteps through the pages of his lesser known work. Wilson's triptych of biographical tales present a complex, courageous and often comic fugitive, careering around a world in the grip of apocalypse, in search of utopia; and, in bringing the true Lawrence into sharp focus, shows how he speaks to us now more than ever.'No biography of Lawrence that I have read comes close to Burning Man' Ferdinand Mount, author of Kiss Myself Goodbye'The most original voice in life-writing today' Lucasta Miller, author of Keats

Review: Wilson's Dantesque excursion detracts only marginally from the brilliance of her book. Her great strength is the aliveness of her writing, which constantly interweaves glowing phrases from Lawrence into its fabric -- JOHN CAREY * SUNDAY TIMES *
D. H. Lawrence's reputation has plummeted in recent decades. This defiantly positive biography sets out to rescue him from his critics and place him back on a literary pedestal * THE TIMES, 100 Best Books for Summer 2022 *
I cannot remember the last time one left me feeling so exhilarated, so challenged and absorbed ... Burning Man is a work of art in its own right, as wanton and as magnificently flawed as anything Lawrence ever wrote ... The chorus of voices builds and builds. Sometimes ecstatic and sometimes shrill, it brings Lawrence alive in all his derangement: his ridiculousness as well as his glory; his perspicacity and his blindness ... Wilson writes so brilliantly, and with such conviction. If you believe, as I do, that to live life well is to fail in ways that may be unimaginably huge, this strange and confounding book is for you -- RACHEL COOKE * OBSERVER *
Not only does Frances Wilson revive her subject, she lifts the whole genre. Biography of this calibre is rare ... Our most original biographer * NEW STATESMAN *
[Wilson] gives it to you straight ... and leaves you to decide for yourself ... This is a red-hot, propulsive book. The impression it leaves is of Lawrence not so much as a phoenix (his chosen personal emblem) rising from the flames, but of a moth coming too close to a candle and, singed and frantic, flying into and into and into the wick * THE TIMES *
DH Lawrence's reputation has plummeted in recent decades. This defiantly positive biography sets out to rescue him from his critics and place him back on a literary pedestal. "Her great strength," John Carey said in his review of Wilson's book, "is the aliveness of her writing" * THE TIMES, 100 Best Books for Summer 2022 *
The challenge for any biographer of one Lawrence is to come to terms with his many contradictions - his rage, impotence, silliness and genius. This elegantly written, intelligent and witty account lays them all bare with admirable skill * EVENING STANDARD *
Wilson tells the story well. It was a period of uncertainty, of bonds being shed and reforged; of the immense growth of Lawrence's reputation -- PHILIP HENSHER * SPECTATOR *
Wilson's Guilty Thing, her life of Thomas De Quincey, is one of the finest recent literary biographies ... Burning Man is in the same league. ... This is a book that performs a rare and laudable task: of saving a writer, posthumously, from himself. We are all beneficiaries of Wilson's articulate and persuasive advocacy -- David Wheatley * Literary Review *
Heady, entrancing, comedic... Outstanding ... Without condoning Lawrence's temper at all - quite the opposite, indeed - Wilson reveals an achingly flawed, ultimately sympathetic human being, who wrote mostly imperfect novels, but whose immense contribution to the twentieth-century literary scene is worth both acknowledging and commemorating. And whatever you have thought of Lawrence, or will think after reading this book, Frances Wilson's Burning Man is a virtuoso performance in the art of biography-writing -- Gerri Kimber * TLS *
A brilliantly unconventional biography, passionately researched and written with a wild, playful energy. Above all Frances Wilson's great achievement is to liberate Lawrence from the old, heavy, moth-eaten "priest of love" mythology, instead breathing new life into his big novels as contemporary "autofiction", and lovingly stoking the furious fires in his letters, poetry and short stories. A new Lawrence emerges: a thinker, travel writer and essayist of strange, absurd, irrepressible genius -- RICHARD HOLMES