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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.
-
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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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.
-
y
DH Lawrence's 99 Days in Australia : Volume Two : The Silvery Freedom ... & the Horrible Paws
Strawberry Hills
:
Svengall Press
,
2016
10246648
2016
single work
criticism
'The Silvery Freedom ... and the Horrible Paws is the story of how DH Lawrence's 8th major novel, Kangaroo, was composed and written. The title refers to Lawrence's realisation - half-way through writing the book - that he had stumbled on a secret para-military organisation in Australia in 1922. "It was as if," he wrote in Kangaroo, "the silvery freedom suddenly turned, and showed the scaly back of a reptile, and the horrible paws."
'This is a story that many people and interests tried to prevent coming out. It reveals the fascist underbelly of post-WW1 Australian society and politics.
'It is the second volume of the author's Lawrence's 99 Days in Australia, which together tell the story of how the 20th-century's most controversial author came to write his most surprising work of "fiction".' (Publication summary)
-
y
DH Lawrence's 99 Days in Australia : Volume One : The Quest for Cooley
'The Quest for Colley'
Strawberry Hills
:
Svengall Press
,
2016
10246607
2016
single work
criticism
'The Quest for Cooley is the story of the 40-year search for the identity of the real life figure that DH Lawrence portrayed as the Australian political leader Benjamin Cooley in his 1923 Australian novel, Kangaroo. Through his intensive research in Australia and overseas, Robert Darroch, a former investigative journalist on The Bulletin, discovered that Lawrence ran across an actual secret army in Sydney in 1922, and unmasked it in his novel of Australia. This is a story that many people and interests have tried to prevent coming out. It exposes the fascist underbelly - what Lawrence called "the horrible paws" - of post-WW1 Australian society and politics.' (Publication summary)
-
Lawrence and Australian Fascism
2015
single work
correspondence
— Appears in: Quadrant , September vol. 59 no. 9 2015; (p. 3-4)
-
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