Kangaroo is a 1923 novel by D. H. Lawrence. It is set in Australia.
Kangaroo is a 1923 novel by D. H. Lawrence. It is set in Australia.
Kangaroo is an account of a visit to New South Wales by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers and his German wife Harriet in the early 1920s. It was written in six and a half weeks during Lawrence and his wife Frieda’s eleven week stay in the NSW coastal town of Thirroul in 1922. The novel includes a chapter ("Nightmare") describing the Somers' experiences in wartime St Ives, Cornwall, vivid descriptions of the Australian landscape, and Richard Somers' sceptical reflections on fringe politics in Sydney. Ultimately, after being initially somewhat drawn to the right-wing Digger movement led by Benjamin Cooley (aka 'Kangaroo') neither it nor the "great general emotion" of Kangaroo himself appeal to Somers. Similarly, Somers rejects the socialism of Willie Struthers, with its emphasis on "generalised love". [1] In this, the novel reflects Lawrence's own response to World War I, as Somers opts “To be clear of love, and pity, and hate. To be alone from it all. To cut himself finally clear from the last encircling arm of the octopus humanity. To turn to the old dark gods, who had waited so long in the outer dark.” [2]
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature describes Kangaroo as a ‘strongly auto-biographical’ novel: "reflecting the almost daily flow of Lawrence’s thoughts and impressions while in Australia. Richard Somers, the restless hero, is a barely disguised picture of Lawrence, as Harriet, his wife, is of Frieda, and many of the domestic incidents are drawn directly from their Australian experience. Described by Lawrence as a ‘thought-adventure’, the novel's apparent formlessness expresses the flow of Somers's inner life; his attraction to and withdrawal from politics; his European memories; his concern with the fundamental question of authority in marriage, society and politics and with the attractions and dangers of democracy, fascism and socialism." [1]
Bruce Steele, in his explanatory notes for Kangaroo in the Cambridge edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence, traces the Fascist allusions in Kangaroo to Lawrence’s 1920-1921 experiences in Italy. [3]
Australian journalist Robert Darroch – in several articles in the late 1970s, the book D. H. Lawrence in Australia (Macmillan, 1981) and the self-published book The Horrible Paws: D. H. Lawrence’s Australian Nightmare (Svengali Press, 2019) – claims that the ‘secret army’ of Diggers featured in Kangaroo must have existed at the time of Lawrence’s arrival in NSW, as Lawrence was a realist writer who depended on personal experience for his material. Darroch posits Major General Sir Charles Rosenthal, a notable NSW World War I leader and co-founder of the NSW branch of the King and Empire League [4] as model for Ben Cooley, and Major John Scott, D.S.O. associate of Rosenthal and 1931 Old Guard recruitment officer, [5] as model for Jack Callcott, the Somers’ neighbour.
Historian, Barbara Kearns, in a centenary review of the novel, contests Darroch’s argument and points out that Lawrence arrived in Sydney with all the material needed to create his ‘thought adventure’. [6] She traces the source of background details for several of Kangaroo’s key characters, to known contacts of Lawrence in Cornwall. She also cites the novel The Black Curtain, by Douglas Goldring, dedicated to Lawrence in 1920, as having had a significant influence on Kangaroo’s plot. In the Black Curtain, as in Kangaroo, the story reaches its dramatic peak when a mob of Diggers storms a socialist meeting.
Historian Joseph Davis in D. H. Lawrence at Thirroul (1989) pointed out it was not possible Lawrence could have had time for secret meetings with political leaders in Sydney, since he was too busy writing his novel in Thirroul, [7] a feat Lawrence accomplished at the average rate of 3,100 words per day. [8]
Davis’ subsequent work D. H. Lawrence and the Mussolini of Austinmer, offers what he calls a “detailed debunking of the myth that D. H. Lawrence ever encountered members of some so-called ‘Old Guard’ in NSW”. [9]
Kangaroo's minor character, James Sharpe is said to have been based on the music critic and composer Cecil Gray. [10]
Kangaroo has influenced Australian historiography to the extent that Historian Andrew Moore - following Darroch - has cited the novel as evidence of a missing link in a continuum of ‘secret counterrevolutionary organisations’ in NSW, between the farmers armies of 1917 and Campbell's 'Old Guard’ of 1931, [11] collectively termed by Moore ‘The Old Guard.’ [12]
Kangaroo was partly responsible for inspiring the Jindyworobak movement, an Australian nationalist literary group, that emerged in the 1930s and was committed to the production of Australian writing evoking 'spirit of place', [1] [13] P.R. Stephensen having argued in The foundations of Culture in Australia (1936) that “visitors, such as D. H. Lawrence, have discerned a spiritual quality of ancient loveliness in our land itself.”
Kangaroo was adapted as a film, also called Kangaroo , in 1987, featuring Colin Friels as Somers, Judy Davis as Harriet and Hugh Keays-Byrne as Kangaroo.
Novelist Margaret Barbalet, in her fiction Steel Beach, (Penguin, 1988) imagined what the known-to-have-been-excised pages from the Kangaroo manuscript could have contained, and evoked an extra-marital Lawrentian affair in Thirroul, complete with illegitimate son.
Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe used extracts from the novel in his work for speaker and orchestra, The Fifth Continent (1963). It was recorded in 1963 by Fred Parslow, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Matthews, and then again in 1997 with the composer narrating, accompanied by Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and David Porcelijn - released on ABC Classics.
Several Australian artists have been inspired by Kangaroo. [14] Sidney Nolan painted 8 canvases in a “D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo” series. Gary Shead has also produced numerous paintings based on Kangaroo and the period Lawrence spent in Thirroul. Several of these, including “Checkmate” which shows Somers playing chess with Callcott, are in Wollongong Art Gallery.
David Herbert Lawrence was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, travel writer, essayist, and painter. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation and industrialization, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct. Four of his most famous novels — Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)— were the subject of censorship trials for their radical portrayals of romance, sexuality and use of explicit language.
The Wiradjuri people are a group of Aboriginal Australian people from central New South Wales, united by common descent through kinship and shared traditions. They survived as skilled hunter-fisher-gatherers, in family groups or clans, and many still use knowledge of hunting and gathering techniques as part of their customary life.
Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, known by her pen name Henry Handel Richardson, was an Australian author.
The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine based in Sydney and first published in 1880. It featured politics, business, poetry, fiction and humour, alongside cartoons and other illustrations.
The Rainbow is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence, first published by Methuen & Co. in 1915. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, focusing particularly on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfilment within the confining structures of English social life. Lawrence's 1920 novel Women in Love is a sequel to The Rainbow.
Frieda Lawrence was a German author and wife of the British novelist D. H. Lawrence.
Thirroul is a northern seaside suburb of the city of Wollongong, Australia. Situated between Austinmer and Bulli, it is approximately 13 kilometres north of Wollongong, and 73 km south of Sydney. It lies between the Pacific Ocean and a section of the Illawarra escarpment known as Lady Fuller Park, adjacent to Bulli Pass Scenic Reserve.
The Jindyworobak Movement was an Australian literary movement of the 1930s and 1940s whose white members, mostly poets, sought to contribute to a uniquely Australian culture through the integration of Indigenous Australian subjects, language and mythology. The movement's stated aim was to "free Australian art from whatever alien influences trammel it" and create works based on an engagement with the Australian landscape and an "understanding of Australia's history and traditions, primeval, colonial and modern".
A kangaroo is a large marsupial endemic to Australia.
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence is an ongoing project by Cambridge University Press to produce definitive editions of the writings of D. H. Lawrence. It is a major scholarly undertaking that strives to provide new versions of the texts as close as can be determined to what the author intended.
The Plumed Serpent is a 1926 political, mythological, and romance novel by D. H. Lawrence; The novel was published in January of 1926 and was reprinted in March of 1926. Lawrence conceived the idea for the novel while visiting Mexico in 1923, and its themes reflect his experiences there. The novel was first published by Martin Secker's firm in the United Kingdom and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States; an early draft was published as Quetzalcoatl by Black Swan Books in 1995. The novel's plot concerns Kate Leslie, an Irish tourist who visits Mexico after the Mexican Revolution. She encounters Don Cipriano, a Mexican general who supports a religious movement, the Men of Quetzalcoatl, founded by his friend Don Ramón Carrasco. Within this movement, Cipriano is identified with Huitzilopochtli and Ramón with Quetzalcoatl. Kate eventually agrees to marry Cipriano, while the Men of Quetzalcoatl, with the help of a new president, bring about an end to Christianity in Mexico, replacing it with pagan Quetzalcoatl worship.
The Boy in the Bush is a novel by D. H. Lawrence set in Western Australia, first published in 1924. It is derived from a story in a manuscript given to Lawrence by Mollie Skinner, entitled The House of Ellis. The title page of the first edition gives "D. H. Lawrence and M. L. Skinner" equal billing as its authors. Lawrence and his wife Frieda stayed with Skinner at her guesthouse in Darlington, Western Australia in 1922.
Garry Shead is an Australian artist and filmmaker. His paintings are in many galleries in Australia and overseas, and he has won several awards, including the Archibald Prize in 1992. He has spent time in Japan, Papua New Guinea, France, Austria, and Hungary, returning to Australia in the 1980s.
Thirroul railway station is a heritage-listed railway station on the South Coast railway line in New South Wales, Australia. It serves the northern Wollongong suburb of Thirroul. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
Lawrence Hargrave Drive, part of the Grand Pacific Drive, is a scenic coastal road and popular tourist drive connecting the northernmost suburbs of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, to Wollongong, in the south, and Sydney, in the north across the scenic Sea Cliff Bridges. It was named after Lawrence Hargrave, an Australian aviation pioneer who lived nearby.
Austinmer is a northern village of Wollongong on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. It sits in the northern Illawarra region, south of Stanwell Park and immediately north of Thirroul.
Major General Sir Charles Rosenthal was an Australian architect, soldier, musician and politician. He commanded units of infantry in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War, and in the 1920s was elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.
Pixie O'Harris was a Welsh-born Australian artist, newspaper, magazine and book illustrator, author, broadcaster, caricaturist and cartoonist, designer of book plates, sheet music covers and stationery, and children's hospital ward fairy-style mural painter. She became patron to Sydney's Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in 1977.
Kangaroo is a 1987 Australian drama film directed by Tim Burstall and starring Colin Friels, Judy Davis, and John Walton. It is based on the 1923 novel of the same name by D. H. Lawrence.
Money Movers is a 1978 Australian crime action drama film written and directed by Bruce Beresford. The film was based on the 1972 novel The Money Movers by Devon Minchin, founder of Metropolitan Security Services. The story deals loosely with two real-life events, the 1970 Sydney Armoured Car Robbery where A$500,000 was stolen from a Mayne Nickless armoured van, and a 1970 incident when A$280,000 was stolen from Metropolitan Security Services' offices by bandits impersonating policemen.
Kangaroo public domain audiobook at LibriVox 