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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Kangaroo, set in Australia, is D. H. Lawrence's eighth novel. He wrote the first draft in just forty-five days while living south of Sydney, in 1922, and revised it three months later in New Mexico. The descriptions of the country are among the most vivid and sympathetic ever penned, and the book fuses lightly disguised autobiography with an exploration of political ideas at an immensely personal level. His anxiety about the future of democracy, caught as it was in the turbulent cross currents of fascism and socialism, is only partly appeased by his vision of a new bond of comradeship between men based on their unique separateness. Lawrence's alter ego Richard Somers departs for America to continue his search.
Adaptations
-
form
y
Kangaroo
( dir. Tim Burstall
)
Australia
:
Western Pacific Films
Naked Country Productions
,
1987
7871581
1987
single work
film/TV
'Adapted from D.H. Lawrence's story of love, violence and political intrigue, based on his personal experiences in Australia in 1922. 'Kangaroo' - the code name of the charismatic leader of a secret fascist army - brings all his dark power to bear to seduce the writer into embracing his ideas, but the writer and his wife find strength in their love reawakened in the exotic southern land.'
Source: Screen Australia.
-
form
y
Kangaroo
United Kingdom (UK)
:
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
,
2000
8145728
2000
single work
radio play
'Set in Australia in 1922, Kangaroo tells the story of English writer Lovat and his wife, who arrive in Sydney in search of a new life.'
Source:
Radio Times, 2 March 2000, p.124.
Notes
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Brief extract published in the Age, 6 February 1995, Student Upate, p.4.
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First published in September 1923 in both New York and London.
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For details of textual variations and variant endings see notes in the Cambridge edition 1994.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Somewhere South
2022
single work
drama
Covers the period that D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda spent in Australia.
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In 'The Far-Off Afterwards : D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo at 100
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Arena Quarterly , Summer no. 12 2022; (p. 70-73) '1922 saw the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room. But in the same year, far from the famous Anglo-Euro-American sites of literary modernism in its annus mirabilis, the emblematically countermodern modernist D. H. Lawrence was in Australia. It was, he thought, ‘the most democratic place [he had] ever seen’—and ‘the more [he saw] of democracy the more [he] dislik[ed] it’. This extreme political reaction resulted in a novel: spending most of his six weeks in Australia in the seaside town of Thirroul, just north of Wollongong, Lawrence wrote a long book called Kangaroo and published it early the following year. It is a strange, somewhat autofictional, almost plotless work, and for a long time was only taken seriously for its mesmeric descriptions of Australian nature, with justly anthologised paragraphs about yellow wattle (‘as if angels had flown right down out of the softest gold regions of heaven to settle here’) or shark fins (‘like small, hard sails of hell boats’). But on the occasion of its centenary the novel ought to be read as well at the level of ideas. The book, in fact, sums up to being one of the most compelling and prognostic critiques ever made of democracy in Australia, and for that reason alone it should not be allowed to drop out of the memory of those of us uneasy with the defaulty democratic status quo.' (Introduction) -
Sojourner Experiment : D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo and Georges Perec's '53 Days'
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: I’m Listening Like the Orange Tree : In Memory of Laurie Hergenhan 2021; (p. 111-126) -
Lost and Found in Translation : Who Can Talk to Country?
2019
single work
essay
— Appears in: Griffith Review , January no. 63 2019; (p. 29-46)'Unlike many city-dwelling Australians, the desert holds no terrors for me. Instead, like DH Lawrence, I find the cathedral forests of the coastal regions oppressive and disquieting. Lawrence brought to his descriptions of the Australian bush the same overwrought sensitivity that created the claustrophobic emotional landscape of 'Sons and Lovers', and the appalling, majestic insularity of the Italian mountain village in 'The Lost Girl'. He was the writer who made explicit the sense of some non-human presence in the Antipodean landscape, and while I have a different interpretation of the 'speechless, aimless solitariness' he attributes to the country, his instincts were good.' (Publication abstract)
-
y
Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity
London
:
Anthem Press
,
2018
15450833
2018
multi chapter work
criticism
'‘Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity’ investigates the interaction between suburbs and suburbia in a century-long series of Australian novels. It puts the often trenchantly anti-suburban rhetoric of Australian fiction in dialogue with its evocative and imaginative rendering of suburban place and time.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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Two Sides to the Story : Against
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 6-7 January 2007; (p. 32)
— Review of Kangaroo 1923 single work novel -
Two Sides to the Story : For
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 6-7 January 2007; (p. 32)
— Review of Kangaroo 1923 single work novel -
Made in Heaven
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 10 November vol. 16 no. 21 1994; (p. 24-25)
— Review of Kangaroo 1923 single work novel -
Lawrence's Works Gain from Local Connection
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: The Australian , 1 March 1995; (p. 28)
— Review of Kangaroo 1923 single work novel -
Untitled
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , March no. 44 1995; (p. 103-104)
— Review of Kangaroo 1923 single work novel -
The Dutch-Australian Connection : Willem Siebenhaar, D. H. Lawrence, Max Havelaar and Kangaroo
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 1 2003; (p. 3-19) This thoroughly researched article traces the life and work of Dutch-born left-wing activist, theosophist, scholar and poet Willem Siebenhaar who moved to Western Australia in 1891, and his connection with D. H. Lawrence, whom he met in 1922 and who helped him secure publication for a translation of Multatuli's Max Havelaar. Drawing on archival material such as Siebenhaar's correspondence, and on the letters of Lawrence, the article provides evidence not only of Siebenhaar's socialist (and at the time rather unpopular) ideas and attitudes, but also of the effects some of these had on Lawrence who put his acquaintance with Siebenhaar to creative use in writing his 'Australian' novel Kangaroo, particularly with regard to the fictional character Willie Struthers. -
The Evolving Literature of Australian Exploration
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Subverting the Empire : Explorers and Exploration in Australian Fiction 2004; (p. 71-96) -
The Passing of Dead Dog
1934
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 21 November vol. 55 no. 2858 1934; (p. 2, 5) Discusses the contrasting views of the Australian landscape presented by these writers. -
The Fox and Kangaroo: 'Non-Human Human Being'
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: D. H. Lawrence, Science and the Posthuman 2005; (p. 141-146) Wallace argues that in The Fox (1923) and Kangaroo (1923) 'the human being is an animal. He discusses the meaning of this equivalence by examining the differences suggested through the narrative form of the two works. -
Aaron's Rod, Kangaroo, The Plumed Serpent: Anti-Capitalism and the Post-Humanistic
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: D. H. Lawrence, Science and the Posthuman 2005; (p. 218-227) Wallace collectively views three of Lawrence's 1920s novels: Aaron's Rod, Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent. He suggests that they 'represent a departure or leave-taking from the illusionist conventions of the realist novel to which, despite marked stylistic-modernistic idiosynracies, Lawrence's earlier fiction had adhered ... In each case the exiled, nomadic protagonist finds in an alternative culture - Italy, Australia, Mexico - a context in which to cease to care about conventional human values, to lapse into a state of isolation or, in the key word of Kangaroo, "indifference".'
- New South Wales,
- Western Australia,
- Sydney, New South Wales,
- South Coast, New South Wales,
- 1920s