On Sunday May 27, 2012, the Society is celebrating the 90th anniversary of Lawrence's arrival in Sydney on May 27, 1922.

We will hold a buffet-style picnic in the Rose Garden Pavilion in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, from 12 noon to 3pm.

We will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the DH Lawrence Society of Australia.

(The Society was launched in May 1992 in the Rose Pavilion.)

Bring a plate of food to add to the buffet table, and bring plenty to drink.

A LITERARY COMPETITION in association with the event is planned, and we hope many of you will enter it:

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING CHAPTER

On June 21, 1922, Frieda Lawrence wrote to Mabel Dodge in Taos, saying: “L has written a novel, gone full tilt at page 305 – but has come to a stop and kicks.”

The same day Lawrence wrote to his agent in New York: “…have done half of Kangaroo – now slightly stuck”.

This “stopping” point in the novel (actually p. 309) comes between chapter ix, “Harriett and Lovatt at Sea in Marriage”, and chapter x, “Diggers”. Originally, “Diggers” was numbered by Lawrence chapter xi.

He renumbered it because the original chapter x is missing, excised from the holograph manuscript (probably with a razor-blade – precisely when, we do not know), leaving only the the indecipherable stubs of about 18 hand-written pages.

A day or so later Lawrence travelled up to Sydney and bought two new exercise books, one of which he later used to complete the first version of his Australian novel.

On the endpiece of the other, he wrote this address:

Chan On Yan

Kuo Min Tang

Chinese Nationalist Party

PO Box 80, Haymarket

Sydney N.S.W.

After he returned to Thirroul, he began a new chapter xi, “Willie Struthers and Kangaroo”, which begins: “Jaz took Somers to the famous Canberra House, in Sydney, where the Socialists and Labour people had their premises: offices, meeting-rooms, club-rooms, quite an establishment.“

You are invited to write – either as text of whatever length you choose, or as a fairly brief chapter summary – what Lawrence might have said in that “missing chapter” (or any other interpretation of what might have occurred).

Your entry can be serious or amusing, or as imaginative, daring, iconoclastic (of Lawrence), or of any other flight of fancy, you might choose.

Entries will be read out at our “Lawrence Anniversary Commemorative Picnic” in the Rose Pavilion of the Botanic Gardens on Sunday May 27.

An appropriate prize will be awarded the winning entry, chosen by acclamation. All entries will be subsequently published in Rananim.

(If you are unable to attend the event, then postal or email entries will not only be accepted, but warmly welcomed.)

You don't have to be a member of the DH Lawrence Society of Australia to come to this event or enter the Competition. All we need is your email address so we can keep in touch with you and let you know of up-coming events. (Membership of the Society is FREE.)

CONTACT THE DH LAWRENCE SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA AT: info@cybersydney.com.au