David Ellis – författare

At the heart of Death and the Author is a dramatic account of D. H. Lawrence's desperate struggle against tuberculosis during his last days, and of certain, often bizarre events which followed his death. Around this narrative David Ellis offers a series of reflections about what it is like to have a disease for which there is no cure, the appeal of alternative medicine, the temptation of suicide for the terminally ill, the diminishing role of religion in modern life, the institution of famous last words, the consequences of dying intestate, and so on. These are clearly not the most immediately appealing of topics but they have an obvious significance for everyone and the treatment of them here is by no means lugubrious (even if, in the nature of the case, most of the jokes fall into the category of gallows humour). Lawrence is the main focus throughout but there are extended references to a number of other famous literary consumptives such as Keats, Katherine Mansfield, Kafka, Chekhov, and George Orwell. Not a long book, Death and the author is divided into three parts called `Dying', `Death' and `Remembrance' and is made up of twenty-two short sections. Although it incorporates a good deal of original material, the annotation has been kept deliberately light. The aim has been to combine the drama of events - a good story - with a consideration of matters which must eventually concern us all, and to present the material in a lively and accessible form.

This volume provides a study of the literary form of the biography.

This is the first book devoted entirely to Lawrence's nonfictional writings. It focuses on a selection of representative texts, each of which is placed in an appropriate literary or historical context. These include the 'Study of Thomas Hardy', the two books about the Unconscious, the travel-writing - primarily Twilight in Italy and Sea and Sardinia - the largely autobiographical 'Introduction to Memoirs of the Foreign Legion by M. M' and the late 'thoughts in verse' called Pansies. David Ellis and Howard Mills challenge the automatic relegation to secondary status suffered by these works in the past and suggest a radical reassessment of Lawrence's literary profile of how his writings relate to one another and of where his greatest power and originality lie.

The passages in Wordsworth's Prelude known as the 'spots of time' have always been regarded as important and impressive but have seldom been satisfactorily explained. Whilst there is general agreement about how well they are written, there is none at all about what they might mean. David Ellis sets out to resolve this paradox and, since the passages which concern him deal with very private moments in Wordsworth's life and have an interest which is largely psychological, he considers how far a knowledge of Freud might be relevant to their understanding. His attempt to clarify what is at once the most intriguing and baffling aspect of Wordsworth's great autobiographical poem leads Ellis to make challenging suggestions about how the whole work should be read. This is a book for the student and general reader of Wordsworth as well as for specialists. It should also appeal to those with an interest in the nature of autobiography or the use (and the misuse) of psych-analytic concepts in literary interpretation.