Description
Frieda Lawrence: A Life in Letters gathers 250 previously unpublished letters by Frieda von Richthofen (1879–1956), who was married to the English novelist D. H. Lawrence for sixteen years, until his death in 1930. This volume, the first new collection of her correspondence in over sixty years, captures her outspoken voice, forceful independence, and adventurous personality. The letters reveal many new layers of the life of a woman who was able to adapt to three vastly different spouses, travel on multiple continents, and handle a legacy of manuscripts and typescripts whose fluctuating value sometimes baffled her. Written from 1896 to 1956, the letters provide a broad vision of Frieda's life: the buoyant social scene at the end of the German Empire; the staid domestic routines of Victorian England; the progressive ideas circulating in Schwabing, Germany; the unconventional wanderings and sometimes tumultuous domesticity with Lawrence; and the stable, settled life in Taos, New Mexico, following his death. Her early experiences and first marriage, recounted in family letters to her sister and mother, prepared her for an unconventional life with Lawrence. Her years with him, in turn, strengthened her later commitment, after 1930, to protecting his legacy and enhancing his reputation. Edited by Lynn K. Talbot and drawn from over thirty years of research, Frieda Lawrence: A Life in Letters presents her correspondence alongside judicious annotations and contextual introductions so that readers can follow the pathways of a remarkable life across the first half of the twentieth century.