Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T12:59:35.698Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Sydney Janet Kaplan
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access

Summary

There must be a certain perversity in writing a book centred on John Middleton Murry (1889–1957), the editor and critic who was once called ‘the best-hated man of letters’ (L: 213). After all, didn't Virginia Woolf name him ‘the one vile man I have ever known’ (LVW 4: 312)? And wasn't he supposed to be the infamous editor Burlap in Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point? And didn't D. H. Lawrence once call him ‘an obscene bug sucking my life away’ (RDHL: 79)? There was something about Murry that alienated people and even his supporters have prefaced their remarks (as I do here), with qualifications. I must admit that I used to go along with the general critical opinion and even contributed my share to his bad reputation in Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction (1991), by objecting to his behaviour as her husband and literary executor. Like most Mansfield critics, I found it easy to use Murry as her negative counterpoint.

For years I had been so absorbed in Katherine Mansfield's writing that I had not interrogated her reactions to Murry sufficiently. I had pored over her letters; read biographies, critical studies and memoirs by friends and acquaintances; and travelled to New Zealand to study her notebooks at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. As it happened, Murry's letters to Mansfield, which had not yet been published, were also housed at the Turnbull Library.

Type
Chapter
Information
Circulating Genius
John Middleton Murry Katherine Mansfield and D. H. Lawrence
, pp. 1 - 12
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×