David Ellis has taught in Australia, Italy and the United States and is now emeritus professor of English Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Apart from a wide variety of writings on D.H. Lawrence, he has published books on Wordsworth and on Shakespeare, most recently Shakespeare's Practical Jokes: an introduction to the comic in his work. He has a strong interest in biographical method (as his book Death and the Author shows), and has written extensively on that topic.

Mark Thwaite: What first made you want to write about D.H. Lawrence?

David Ellis: I suspect that if you’re brought up in a mining district, and you are interested in books, Lawrence is always likely to seem an important figure but then, when I went to Cambridge, I was taught by F.R. Leavis so that it soon became natural to me to regard Lawrence as someone whom one might well want to think or write about.

MT: You approach Lawrence from the perspective of death (and the general response to it) — why this angle?

DE: I think the story of Lawrence’s death, and what happened after it, is peculiarly dramatic and poignant (as well as on occasions grotesque), but I wanted to make its arresting details an occasion for reflection on a number of issues which matter to us all: what it feels like to suffer from a disease for which there is no cure, for example, what we feel about hospitals, the allure of alternative medicine or the powerlessness of the dead to affect how they are remembered. My aim was to write a different kind of biographical study, one which was something more than "one damned thing after another."

MT: What was the most difficult aspect of writing your book? How did you overcome it?

DE: I knew I was up against it, first in writing about Lawrence (who is hardly flavour of the month) and then in wanting to talk about such a cheerful subject as death. I could only tackle the first problem by trying to show that Lawrence was a much more complex and interesting person than is now generally assumed although I also took pains to vary the reader’s diet by introducing into my discussions a number of other famous literary consumptives -- people like Kafka, Chekhov or Orwell. As far as not being too depressing is concerned, there are in my book quite a number of jokes, although most of these are necessarily of the gallows humour variety, and I’ve tried in writing it to remember that normal people read books for pleasure and not out of duty.

MT: How long did it take you to write and research Death and the Author, David?

DE: I've worked on Lawrence for over twenty years, on and off, and written a lot on him in what is mostly an academic vein so that much of the relevant material was already in my head. Puzzling out the form of this book, making some additional enquiries, and then writing it, took me about two years.

MT: Do you enjoy the research or are you always itching to get down to the actual writing? How do you write?

DE: I enjoy writing but after a few weeks feel that I need or want to do some more research, but then, when I have been doing research for a while, I itch to get back to the computer. As for the process of writing itself, I tend to sketch out a section of a book in longhand, revise the sketch several times and then go to the computer when the skeletal form is clear in my head but there will still be plenty of room for manoeuvre as I write.

MT: What do you hope your book will achieve?

DE: I'm always gloomy about the prospect of what I write achieving anything, but I would hope that I could dispel several prejudices about Lawrence and also help a few people who want to think about dying, death and remembrance. At the same time, I have tried to write the book with enough pace and verve to be enjoyable. That the subject matter is serious is no excuse for being solemn and pontifical.

MT: Lawrence's star seems to have been waning since Leavis’s time -- why do you think this is David?

DE: It certainly has waned. Forty years ago his books were on every university syllabus, now you would be hard put to find many of them being taught in this country, or any at all in the States. One of the reasons for this is that his reputation during the 1960s was based far too much on Lady Chatterley’s Lover (which is not one of his best books) but, since it is quite true that he wrote some passages which are distinctly misogynistic, another, more general one is what is known as the second wave of feminism. It hasn’t helped also that Lawrence was not a liberal in politics. You might ask what a man’s attitude to women or to democracy has to do with whether or not he is a good writer but, as far as Lawrence’s standing in the academic world goes, the answer is a good deal.

MT: Do you think we’ll ever see a Lawrence revival? What are his strengths as a writer?

DE: Well, the pendulum always tends to swing back but I can’t see his reputation ever being as high as it once was. As for his strengths, that’s a question it would take hours to answer properly. Perhaps I can stress here his extraordinary versatility (novels, short stories, poems, travel books, literary criticism etc.), the immediacy of much of his writing, and the remarkable techniques he was able to develop for conveying to his readers nuances of feeling which, as far as those who experience them are concerned, cannot be articulated.

MT: Do you read the critics? Have you been pleased with responses to your book? Have you learned anything from them?

DE: Death and the Author was designed as a book for the general reader so that I’m very disappointed that it did not get more widely reviewed. But then reviews are usually lessons in humility. From past experience I know that I tend to interpret favourable mentions of my work as just people being kind and take to heart the unfavourable ones, even those I recognise as ill-informed.

MT: What do you do when you are not writing?

DE: Good question. I used to play cricket for a local village team and then I tried some golf but now I watch my sport on television. I still exercise a fair amount but, as my wife complains, when I'm not writing, or the writing is going badly, I’m sadly deficient in alternative activities. I'm told I ought to develop a hobby but hobbies are not the result of an act of will. Still, our younger daughter now has two small children and they more than fill what I think Parkinson calls the time allowed.

MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of an “ideal” reader? Do you write specifically for them?

DE: I remember that Stendhal always thought of an ideal audience for his writing which included Madame Roland and his old maths teacher at school (both of whom were of course dead). I have one or two living ideal readers among my friends who are kind enough to scribble over my first drafts but I don’t suppose I write specifically for them. There are of course always people in the wider world whom you admire and dream of pleasing but, although it seems ludicrously solipsistic to say so, I think that when most people set out to write books what they have in mind is something they themselves would like to read.

MT: What are you working on now, David?

DE: I'm writing a book with the self-explanatory title That summer of 1816: Byron on the lake of Geneva.

MT: Who is your favourite writer? What are your favourite books?

DE: This is a difficult question for anyone who has spent most of his life teaching literature. How do I discriminate between the usual suspects: Shakespeare, Tolstoy etc.?I suppose if I have a favourite period it’s when romanticism is beginning but many writers are still imbued with 18th century values, and that’s why Stendhal was such a revelation for me when I first discovered him at school.

In the case of Lawrence, I always go back to the three great novels -- Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love -- but I also love many of the poems and Sea and Sardinia. Of course, this misses out the short stories and novellas, but we’re back to the question of his versatility again.

MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer?

DE: Since I still aspire myself it would be pretentious of me to offer any tips. Keep at it has been my motto up to now.