Susan Reid is the Editor of the Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies and author of D. H. Lawrence, Music and Modernism (Palgrave, 2019). Her co-edited works include Katherine Mansfield and Literary Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2011) and the forthcoming Edinburgh Companion to D. H. Lawrence and the Arts (2020). An independent scholar based in the UK, she completed her Phd titled 'Masculinities in the Novels of D. H. Lawrence' at the University of Northampton in 2008.
The cover of this number shows Piccadilly Circus in London in 1908, the year when D. H. Lawrence ... more The cover of this number shows Piccadilly Circus in London in 1908, the year when D. H. Lawrence moved to its suburban outskirts. This famous site – close to the Royal Academy of Arts that he soon visited and the Café Royal later recreated in the ‘Crême de Menthe’ chapter of Women in Love – reflects the complexity of Lawrence’s experiences of the city as an exciting place of opportunity juxtaposed with a grimmer reality where, in the poetic voice of his ‘Piccadilly Circus at Night / Street-Walkers’: “Only we fard-faced creatures go round and round, and keep / The shores of this innermost ocean alive and illusory” (1Poems 39). London is the city to which Lawrence returned repeatedly until 1926 and which stands in contrast to what he called “the country of my heart” (5L 592) – the Nottinghamshire where he grew up. London features throughout Lawrence’s fiction, and in his earliest poems to his late essays, as the articles in this number examine. Introduced and co-curated by Catherine Brown (director of the 14th International D. H. Lawrence Conference held in London in 2017), this is the first collection of essays to interrogate Lawrence’s rich but conflicted relationship with the city that launched and influenced his literary career, and which provoked his ire at least as often as his admiration.
This volume of JDHLS is a special issue on the influence of Lawrence's time in Cornwall (1916-191... more This volume of JDHLS is a special issue on the influence of Lawrence's time in Cornwall (1916-1917) on his life and writing. It is available to members of the D. H. Lawrence Society of Great Britain. Back numbers of JDHLS are posted on the Society's website at https://dhlawrencesociety.com/the-journal-of-d-h-lawrence-studies/
Together these two exhibitions of work from across the great divide of the Atlantic raise many qu... more Together these two exhibitions of work from across the great divide of the Atlantic raise many questions about the art of modernism and, particularly, whether art that is rooted in specific landscapes can remain modern and speak across cultures and times. Although, in the cases of O’Keeffe and Nash, some art critics and gallery curators have their reservations, an enduring interest arises from the personal responses of these artists to particular moments, in particular places, and, above all, in their ability to make us look again at what we thought we knew. As O’Keeffe said, in an echo of Lawrence, “Making your unknown known is the most important thing and keeping the unknown always beyond you”.
Around 1907 or 1908 traditional ideas concerning the tonality of music collapsed. Since the conce... more Around 1907 or 1908 traditional ideas concerning the tonality of music collapsed. Since the concept of tonality is broad – encompassing all aspects of melody and harmony, particularly hierarchical relationships – the disruption caused by musical innovations in the period is perceived by some to have been seismic in its effects. On a par, perhaps, with Virginia Woolf’s much-quoted pronouncement that “on or about April 1910 human nature changed”. Woolf was, in part, reflecting on a new era in the visual arts heralded by the first Post-Impressionist Exhibition, but how might the equally radical developments in music have affected what she called “human nature” and, most particularly, the writer’s expression of it? Musicologist Carl Dahlhaus defines modernism in music as the progressive music of the period 1890-1910, with the music of Mahler, Strauss and Debussy marking a historic transformation. It can therefore be argued that modernism in music preceded and even shaped literary modernism. Indeed, by 1910, Sergei Diaghilev was shocking audiences with performances by the Ballets Russes which combined avant-garde music, choreography and design, in a way that seems quintessentially modernist according to Daniel Albright’s conception that “the arts seem endlessly interpermeable, a set of fluid systems of construing and reinterpreting, in which the quest for meaning engages all our senses at once”. To what extent, then, did Lawrence belong and contribute to this stream of modernism? Did he respond to developments in music, in the way that critics suggest that he responded to art, literature and philosophy? And what might we learn about his creative development by putting music at its centre?
This first book-length study of D. H. Lawrence’s lifelong engagement with music surveys his exten... more This first book-length study of D. H. Lawrence’s lifelong engagement with music surveys his extensive musical interests and how these permeate his writing, while also situating Lawrence within a growing body of work on music and modernism. A twin focus considers the music that shaped Lawrence’s novels and poetry, as well as contemporary developments in music that parallel his quest for new forms of expression. Comparisons are made with the music of Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Wagner, and British composers, including Bax, Holst and Vaughan Williams, and with the musical writings of Forster, Hardy, Hueffer (Ford), Nietzsche and Pound. Above all, by exploring Lawrence and music in historical context, this study aims to open up new areas for study and a place for Lawrence within the field of music and modernism.
Reviews
“If music in Lawrence has previously seemed a marginal theme, Susan Reid shows it to be a major question both within the oeuvre and in relation to broader modernist culture. How has this topic been missed? Her over-arching yet close-grained argument will surely be the classic point of reference.” (Michael Bell, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, UK) “This pathbreaking study will provide an invaluable research resource for music in D. H. Lawrence’s works and inter-arts Modernism for years to come. Reid’s monumental undertaking encompasses Lawrence’s profound engagements with acoustical, contemporary, classical, folk, and experimental musical forms in each phase of this virtuosic career, in poetry and the novel, culminating in exposition of Lawrence’s own compositions in music for his epic, last play, David.” (Holly A. Laird, Frances W. O’Hornett Chair of Literature, University of Tulsa, USA) “D.H. Lawrence, Music and Modernism returns its subject to the center of a series of debates currently energizing Twentieth Century Studies. Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, Dr. Reid’s study consolidates Lawrence’s reputation as a front-rank literary modernist – one who (alongside Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Proust, Mann and many other writers) was drawn to music as a means to explore a series of aesthetic, personal and political issues.” (Gerry Smyth, Professor of Irish Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores University, UK) In the crowded field of Lawrence studies, it is rare to encounter new critical perspectives as widely informed and as strikingly original as this impressive work of interdisciplinary scholarship by Susan Reid. Carefully contextualised, lucidly argued and thought-provoking throughout, Reid’s meticulous tracing of the intricate web of ligatures that link Lawrence, music and modernism uncovers a whole new dimension to Lawrence’s work and provides valuable soundings for future research of a related nature. (Paul Poplawski, Lawrence scholar and bibliographer, formerly of the University of Leicester, UK)
Virginia Woolf, Night and Day (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf), ed. Michael... more Virginia Woolf, Night and Day (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf), ed. Michael H. Whitworth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. cxiii + 745. £85.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978 0 5218 7895 1
In September 1919, Lawrence drafted a Foreword to his then unpublished Women in Love (1920), explaining that “it is a novel which took its final shape in the midst of the period of war, though it does not concern the war itself. I should wish the time to remain unfixed, so that the bitterness of the war may be taken for granted in the characters” (WL 485). A month later, in October 1919, Virginia Woolf published her second novel, Night and Day, also written during the War and making no mention of it. ...
The cover of this number shows Piccadilly Circus in London in 1908, the year when D. H. Lawrence ... more The cover of this number shows Piccadilly Circus in London in 1908, the year when D. H. Lawrence moved to its suburban outskirts. This famous site – close to the Royal Academy of Arts that he soon visited and the Café Royal later recreated in the ‘Crême de Menthe’ chapter of Women in Love – reflects the complexity of Lawrence’s experiences of the city as an exciting place of opportunity juxtaposed with a grimmer reality where, in the poetic voice of his ‘Piccadilly Circus at Night / Street-Walkers’: “Only we fard-faced creatures go round and round, and keep / The shores of this innermost ocean alive and illusory” (1Poems 39). London is the city to which Lawrence returned repeatedly until 1926 and which stands in contrast to what he called “the country of my heart” (5L 592) – the Nottinghamshire where he grew up. London features throughout Lawrence’s fiction, and in his earliest poems to his late essays, as the articles in this number examine. Introduced and co-curated by Catherine Brown (director of the 14th International D. H. Lawrence Conference held in London in 2017), this is the first collection of essays to interrogate Lawrence’s rich but conflicted relationship with the city that launched and influenced his literary career, and which provoked his ire at least as often as his admiration.
This volume of JDHLS is a special issue on the influence of Lawrence's time in Cornwall (1916-191... more This volume of JDHLS is a special issue on the influence of Lawrence's time in Cornwall (1916-1917) on his life and writing. It is available to members of the D. H. Lawrence Society of Great Britain. Back numbers of JDHLS are posted on the Society's website at https://dhlawrencesociety.com/the-journal-of-d-h-lawrence-studies/
Together these two exhibitions of work from across the great divide of the Atlantic raise many qu... more Together these two exhibitions of work from across the great divide of the Atlantic raise many questions about the art of modernism and, particularly, whether art that is rooted in specific landscapes can remain modern and speak across cultures and times. Although, in the cases of O’Keeffe and Nash, some art critics and gallery curators have their reservations, an enduring interest arises from the personal responses of these artists to particular moments, in particular places, and, above all, in their ability to make us look again at what we thought we knew. As O’Keeffe said, in an echo of Lawrence, “Making your unknown known is the most important thing and keeping the unknown always beyond you”.
Around 1907 or 1908 traditional ideas concerning the tonality of music collapsed. Since the conce... more Around 1907 or 1908 traditional ideas concerning the tonality of music collapsed. Since the concept of tonality is broad – encompassing all aspects of melody and harmony, particularly hierarchical relationships – the disruption caused by musical innovations in the period is perceived by some to have been seismic in its effects. On a par, perhaps, with Virginia Woolf’s much-quoted pronouncement that “on or about April 1910 human nature changed”. Woolf was, in part, reflecting on a new era in the visual arts heralded by the first Post-Impressionist Exhibition, but how might the equally radical developments in music have affected what she called “human nature” and, most particularly, the writer’s expression of it? Musicologist Carl Dahlhaus defines modernism in music as the progressive music of the period 1890-1910, with the music of Mahler, Strauss and Debussy marking a historic transformation. It can therefore be argued that modernism in music preceded and even shaped literary modernism. Indeed, by 1910, Sergei Diaghilev was shocking audiences with performances by the Ballets Russes which combined avant-garde music, choreography and design, in a way that seems quintessentially modernist according to Daniel Albright’s conception that “the arts seem endlessly interpermeable, a set of fluid systems of construing and reinterpreting, in which the quest for meaning engages all our senses at once”. To what extent, then, did Lawrence belong and contribute to this stream of modernism? Did he respond to developments in music, in the way that critics suggest that he responded to art, literature and philosophy? And what might we learn about his creative development by putting music at its centre?
This first book-length study of D. H. Lawrence’s lifelong engagement with music surveys his exten... more This first book-length study of D. H. Lawrence’s lifelong engagement with music surveys his extensive musical interests and how these permeate his writing, while also situating Lawrence within a growing body of work on music and modernism. A twin focus considers the music that shaped Lawrence’s novels and poetry, as well as contemporary developments in music that parallel his quest for new forms of expression. Comparisons are made with the music of Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Wagner, and British composers, including Bax, Holst and Vaughan Williams, and with the musical writings of Forster, Hardy, Hueffer (Ford), Nietzsche and Pound. Above all, by exploring Lawrence and music in historical context, this study aims to open up new areas for study and a place for Lawrence within the field of music and modernism.
Reviews
“If music in Lawrence has previously seemed a marginal theme, Susan Reid shows it to be a major question both within the oeuvre and in relation to broader modernist culture. How has this topic been missed? Her over-arching yet close-grained argument will surely be the classic point of reference.” (Michael Bell, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, UK) “This pathbreaking study will provide an invaluable research resource for music in D. H. Lawrence’s works and inter-arts Modernism for years to come. Reid’s monumental undertaking encompasses Lawrence’s profound engagements with acoustical, contemporary, classical, folk, and experimental musical forms in each phase of this virtuosic career, in poetry and the novel, culminating in exposition of Lawrence’s own compositions in music for his epic, last play, David.” (Holly A. Laird, Frances W. O’Hornett Chair of Literature, University of Tulsa, USA) “D.H. Lawrence, Music and Modernism returns its subject to the center of a series of debates currently energizing Twentieth Century Studies. Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, Dr. Reid’s study consolidates Lawrence’s reputation as a front-rank literary modernist – one who (alongside Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Proust, Mann and many other writers) was drawn to music as a means to explore a series of aesthetic, personal and political issues.” (Gerry Smyth, Professor of Irish Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores University, UK) In the crowded field of Lawrence studies, it is rare to encounter new critical perspectives as widely informed and as strikingly original as this impressive work of interdisciplinary scholarship by Susan Reid. Carefully contextualised, lucidly argued and thought-provoking throughout, Reid’s meticulous tracing of the intricate web of ligatures that link Lawrence, music and modernism uncovers a whole new dimension to Lawrence’s work and provides valuable soundings for future research of a related nature. (Paul Poplawski, Lawrence scholar and bibliographer, formerly of the University of Leicester, UK)
Virginia Woolf, Night and Day (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf), ed. Michael... more Virginia Woolf, Night and Day (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Virginia Woolf), ed. Michael H. Whitworth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. cxiii + 745. £85.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978 0 5218 7895 1
In September 1919, Lawrence drafted a Foreword to his then unpublished Women in Love (1920), explaining that “it is a novel which took its final shape in the midst of the period of war, though it does not concern the war itself. I should wish the time to remain unfixed, so that the bitterness of the war may be taken for granted in the characters” (WL 485). A month later, in October 1919, Virginia Woolf published her second novel, Night and Day, also written during the War and making no mention of it. ...
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Papers by Susan Reid
Musicologist Carl Dahlhaus defines modernism in music as the progressive music of the period 1890-1910, with the music of Mahler, Strauss and Debussy marking a historic transformation. It can therefore be argued that modernism in music preceded and even shaped literary modernism. Indeed, by 1910, Sergei Diaghilev was shocking audiences with performances by the Ballets Russes which combined avant-garde music, choreography and design, in a way that seems quintessentially modernist according to Daniel Albright’s conception that “the arts seem endlessly interpermeable, a set of fluid systems of construing and reinterpreting, in which the quest for meaning engages all our senses at once”. To what extent, then, did Lawrence belong and contribute to this stream of modernism? Did he respond to developments in music, in the way that critics suggest that he responded to art, literature and philosophy? And what might we learn about his creative development by putting music at its centre?
http://dorothyrichardson.org/PJDRS/Issue7/Contents_assets/Reid15.html
Books by Susan Reid
Reviews
“If music in Lawrence has previously seemed a marginal theme, Susan Reid shows it to be a major question both within the oeuvre and in relation to broader modernist culture. How has this topic been missed? Her over-arching yet close-grained argument will surely be the classic point of reference.” (Michael Bell, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, UK)
“This pathbreaking study will provide an invaluable research resource for music in D. H. Lawrence’s works and inter-arts Modernism for years to come. Reid’s monumental undertaking encompasses Lawrence’s profound engagements with acoustical, contemporary, classical, folk, and experimental musical forms in each phase of this virtuosic career, in poetry and the novel, culminating in exposition of Lawrence’s own compositions in music for his epic, last play, David.” (Holly A. Laird, Frances W. O’Hornett Chair of Literature, University of Tulsa, USA)
“D.H. Lawrence, Music and Modernism returns its subject to the center of a series of debates currently energizing Twentieth Century Studies. Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, Dr. Reid’s study consolidates Lawrence’s reputation as a front-rank literary modernist – one who (alongside Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Proust, Mann and many other writers) was drawn to music as a means to explore a series of aesthetic, personal and political issues.” (Gerry Smyth, Professor of Irish Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
In the crowded field of Lawrence studies, it is rare to encounter new critical perspectives as widely informed and as strikingly original as this impressive work of interdisciplinary scholarship by Susan Reid. Carefully contextualised, lucidly argued and thought-provoking throughout, Reid’s meticulous tracing of the intricate web of ligatures that link Lawrence, music and modernism uncovers a whole new dimension to Lawrence’s work and provides valuable soundings for future research of a related nature. (Paul Poplawski, Lawrence scholar and bibliographer, formerly of the University of Leicester, UK)
Book Reviews by Susan Reid
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pp. cxiii + 745. £85.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978 0 5218 7895 1
In September 1919, Lawrence drafted a Foreword to his then unpublished Women in Love (1920), explaining that “it is a novel which took its final shape in the midst of the period of war, though it does not concern the war itself. I should wish the time to remain unfixed, so that the bitterness of the war may be taken for granted in the characters” (WL 485). A month later, in October 1919, Virginia Woolf published her second novel, Night and Day, also written during the War and making no mention of it. ...
Musicologist Carl Dahlhaus defines modernism in music as the progressive music of the period 1890-1910, with the music of Mahler, Strauss and Debussy marking a historic transformation. It can therefore be argued that modernism in music preceded and even shaped literary modernism. Indeed, by 1910, Sergei Diaghilev was shocking audiences with performances by the Ballets Russes which combined avant-garde music, choreography and design, in a way that seems quintessentially modernist according to Daniel Albright’s conception that “the arts seem endlessly interpermeable, a set of fluid systems of construing and reinterpreting, in which the quest for meaning engages all our senses at once”. To what extent, then, did Lawrence belong and contribute to this stream of modernism? Did he respond to developments in music, in the way that critics suggest that he responded to art, literature and philosophy? And what might we learn about his creative development by putting music at its centre?
http://dorothyrichardson.org/PJDRS/Issue7/Contents_assets/Reid15.html
Reviews
“If music in Lawrence has previously seemed a marginal theme, Susan Reid shows it to be a major question both within the oeuvre and in relation to broader modernist culture. How has this topic been missed? Her over-arching yet close-grained argument will surely be the classic point of reference.” (Michael Bell, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, UK)
“This pathbreaking study will provide an invaluable research resource for music in D. H. Lawrence’s works and inter-arts Modernism for years to come. Reid’s monumental undertaking encompasses Lawrence’s profound engagements with acoustical, contemporary, classical, folk, and experimental musical forms in each phase of this virtuosic career, in poetry and the novel, culminating in exposition of Lawrence’s own compositions in music for his epic, last play, David.” (Holly A. Laird, Frances W. O’Hornett Chair of Literature, University of Tulsa, USA)
“D.H. Lawrence, Music and Modernism returns its subject to the center of a series of debates currently energizing Twentieth Century Studies. Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, Dr. Reid’s study consolidates Lawrence’s reputation as a front-rank literary modernist – one who (alongside Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Proust, Mann and many other writers) was drawn to music as a means to explore a series of aesthetic, personal and political issues.” (Gerry Smyth, Professor of Irish Cultural History, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
In the crowded field of Lawrence studies, it is rare to encounter new critical perspectives as widely informed and as strikingly original as this impressive work of interdisciplinary scholarship by Susan Reid. Carefully contextualised, lucidly argued and thought-provoking throughout, Reid’s meticulous tracing of the intricate web of ligatures that link Lawrence, music and modernism uncovers a whole new dimension to Lawrence’s work and provides valuable soundings for future research of a related nature. (Paul Poplawski, Lawrence scholar and bibliographer, formerly of the University of Leicester, UK)
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pp. cxiii + 745. £85.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978 0 5218 7895 1
In September 1919, Lawrence drafted a Foreword to his then unpublished Women in Love (1920), explaining that “it is a novel which took its final shape in the midst of the period of war, though it does not concern the war itself. I should wish the time to remain unfixed, so that the bitterness of the war may be taken for granted in the characters” (WL 485). A month later, in October 1919, Virginia Woolf published her second novel, Night and Day, also written during the War and making no mention of it. ...