The major event since our last issue of Rananim has been the (long-awaited) publication of the Cambridge University Press "authoritative" edition of Kangaroo - Lawrence’s novel of Australia. Expectations for this volume were high, and its editor, Melbourne academic Professor Bruce Steele of Monash University, has not disappointed us.

As our reviewer, Paul Eggert, makes clear in his review of this important volume (see page 15), Dr Steele has not resiled from the challenge of the provenance of this hitherto controversial novel. He comes out strongly against what has come to be known as "the Darroch Thesis".

There will be some relief in Lawrence circles at the strength of Dr Steele’s analysis of the alleged "real-life" background to Lawrence’s novel. Ever since Robert Darroch published his first articles (in the mid-1970s) about Lawrence’s Australian sojourn, attempting to undermine the accepted interpretation of Kangaroo, there has been disquiet about this period in Lawrence’s literary life.

Darroch, in a series of articles, and then in his D.H. Lawrence in Australia (Macmillan, 1981), claimed that Lawrence based his novel on a real-life encounter with an actual secret army in NSW in 1922. This was at variance with the received interpretation of the novel, and posed a major challenge to Lawrence scholarship.

A number of critics tended to accept, or at least countenance, Darroch’s "thesis", though others staunchly denied that Lawrence could have had any contact with real-life secret army figures in Sydney during his brief stay in Sydney and Thirroul. Historians like Dr Andrew Moore supported Darroch, while literary critics such as Professor Andrew Reimer were dismissive of his theories.

The controversy simmered through the 1980s and into the present decade, placing an unresolved question mark over not only one of Lawrence’s major literary works, but on a significant aspect of his life. However, in the latter part of this period, Darroch’s controversial ideas were increasingly criticised, by both local and overseas writers.

A considerable blow to Darroch’s position was delivered by Dr Joseph Davis in his 1989 book, D.H. Lawrence at Thirroul. Dr Davis pointed out that Lawrence could only have spent a very limited time in Sydney, and may only have made one trip up from Thirroul during his 10-week stay there. Thus he would have had little or no occasion to met the many secret army figures that Darroch claims he did.

Dr Davis also questioned other parts of Darroch’s "provisional reconstruction" of Lawrence’s time in NSW. He put forward a scenario of Lawrence’s stay in Sydney that precluded any meetings with people like Major Jack Scott or Sir Charles Rosenthal, whom Darroch alleged were portrayed in Kangaroo as the secret army leaders Jack Callcott and Benjamin Cooley. Even if there were any "real" secret army material in the novel, Dr Davis claimed, Lawrence was much more likely to have picked this up in Thirroul.

Subsequently, Dr Davis’s book was favourably reviewed by Dr Steele in the D.H. Lawrence Review, the main international journal of Lawrence scholarship. Dr Steele said that Dr Davis’s account of Lawrence’s time in NSW was much more credible that Darroch’s theories.

A later article in the DHLR by the authorised Cambridge University Press biographer of Lawrence’s middle years, David Ellis, took up Dr Davis’s critique of what he called "the Darroch controversy" and used it to cast further doubt on Darroch’s "thesis". Ellis, whose biography is due out soon, also pointed out that some of the alleged underpinnings of Darroch’s "reconstruction" had been shown by other local research to be less than certain, particularly the identification of a house in North Sydney as the place Major Scott allegedly entertained Lawrence in 1922. Ellis commented that the "after life" of such elements in Darroch’s theories did not augur well for the rest of his "reconstruction".

Perhaps the major attack on Darroch (prior to the present volume of Kangaroo) came in 1991, when Dr Steele published a text of an address he had delivered at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. The article, in the La Trobe English Department review Meridian, brought together the growing doubts over Darroch’s account of Lawrence’s stay in Australia. Dr Steele in particular criticised Darroch’s identification of Charles Rosenthal as the fictional secret army leader Ben Cooley. Dr Steele said that pictures of Rosenthal gave little or no physical support to such a speculation. He questioned Darroch’s methodology and pointed out, as Ellis had previously, that Lawrence did not need "real life" inspiration to fuel his fiction.

Dr Steele’s critique was answered by Darroch in a later edition of Meridian, but this did not lead Steele or his fellow doubters to rethink their position, and Dr Steele in the Introduction to his new CUP edition of Kangaroo has now further elaborated on the controversy, coming to the conclusion that Darroch’s "thesis" about Lawrence’s alleged involvement with real-life secret army figures "has now been shown to be without foundation".

In the Introduction, Dr Steele repeats his rejection of the identification of Cooley as Rosenthal, and says that if Lawrence had anyone in mind when inventing this figure, it would have been the Victorian military leader Sir John Monash rather than Rosenthal. He also points out that Australia’s Returned Servicemen’s League was a much-more-likely source for Lawrence’s fictional "Diggers" than any alleged secret army. This, plus Lawrence’s previous observation of Fascist violence in Italy, were sufficient "sources" for the novel’s political plot, Dr Steele adds.

There is no question that such wording echoes some of Lawrence’s description of the Diggers secret army in Kangaroo. One of the main supports of the Darroch Thesis has hitherto been the alleged coincidence of Lawrence’s choice of a secret army theme in the novel and the existence of an actual secret army in Australia at the time of Lawrence’s visit (an alleged existence that, Dr Steele says, has yet to be established). However, an even more compelling coincidence would have been such a choice of theme, and Lawrence’s invention of a secret army in a previous book. In effect, what Steele is saying is that Lawrence had no need of any contact with an alleged real secret army in Australia - for he brought one with him to Australia as part of his mental baggage.

Dr Steele has many other interesting comments and observations in this new edition, not only on the up-till-now vexed matter of Lawrence’s alleged local sources of inspiration, but on Lawrence’s time in Australia generally. He makes much more of Lawrence’s stay in Western Australia that Darroch does, and reveals the names of people Lawrence met during his antipodean sojourn, particularly a family called Elder Walker, whom Lawrence met on the boat to Perth, later stayed with in Melbourne and corresponded with thereafter.

He also establishes a new text for Kangaroo, which after all is the main purpose of this new, and very handsome, CUP edition. The text he chooses is the U.S. or Seltzer variant, which, apart from two recent Australian editions, has been out of print for decades, the UK or Secker text being the main circulating text since the 1920s. The main difference between the two texts is that the U.S. text incorporates Lawrence’s final proof corrections, while the UK edition lacks them. However, the two texts also have a different ending, the Seltzer text ending 365 words earlier than the Secker text. Dr Steele explains in some detail how this unusual difference came about.