Paul Eggert's book meshes biographical scholarship and editorial theory with literary-critical analysis to offer a fresh understanding and appreciation of how D. H. Lawrence wrote. By concentrating on the material surfaces and biographical moments of Lawrence's textual performances as he wrote and revised, Eggert reveals a continuous intellectual-imaginative project across his novels, stories, plays and poems. Gone is the old Lawrence-as-moralist of the sacred body and interfering mind in favour of a new Lawrence as a profoundly Modernist performer engaged in writing-acts of self-revealing discovery, characterised by projective force and ceaseless experiment. The interwoven and intersecting versions of his many writings are explored at revealing moments in his writing career. New, compelling accounts of his most important novels, poetry and travel books become possible. Students of creative writing and Modernist literature, and all readers of Lawrence's works, will benefit from this ambitious and original book.