SQUIRES, Michael (George) 1941-

PERSONAL: Born July 18, 1941, in Alexandria, VA; son of Fay Calvin (a statistician) and Arvilla (Windell) Squires; married Sylvia Nottingham (a learning disabilities teacher), August 15, 1964 (divorced, 1981); married Lynn K. Talbot (a Spanish professor), June 27, 1987; children: Kelly Michael, Cameron Windell, Andrew. Education: Bucknell University, B.A., 1963; University of Virginia, M.A., 1964; University of Maryland, Ph.D., 1969.

ADDRESSES: Home—1416 Palmer Drive, Blacksburg, VA 24060. Offıce—Department of English, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112. E-mail— msquires@vt.edu.

CAREER: Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, instructor in English, 1964-65; University of Maryland, College Park, instructor in English, 1967-69; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, assistant professor, 1969-75, associate professor of English, 1975-80; professor of English, 1980-2001; professor emeritus, 2001.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, College English Association, Conference on College Composition and Communication.

AWARDS, HONORS: Harry T. Moore Award for Distinguished Scholarship on D. H. Lawernce, 1994.

WRITINGS:

The Pastoral Novel: Studies in George Eliot, ThomasHardy, and D. H. Lawrence, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1974.

The Creation of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1983.

(With wife, Lynn K. Talbot) Living at the Edge: ABiography of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2002.

EDITOR:

(With Dennis Jackson) D. H. Lawrence's "Lady": ANew Look at Lady Chatterley's Lover, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1985.

(With Keith Cushman) The Challenge of D. H.Lawrence, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1990.

D. H. Lawrence's Manuscripts: The Correspondence of Frieda Lawrence, Jake Zeitlin, and Others, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1991.

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover; A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

SIDELIGHTS: A past president of the D. H. Lawrence Society of America, Michael Squires has parlayed his expertise into a number of books about the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Rainbow, and other classic novels. As editor of Lady Chatterley's Lover; A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," Squires presents some of the hundreds of letters written by Lawrence toward the end of his life. Though sick with tuberculosis, Lawrence still took an active part in the publishing of his controversial novel. "What comes across" in Squires's work, noted Karen McLeod Hewitt in the Review of English Studies, "is the quality of life still within the dying man. Through the 784 letters and cards written over this period we learn of his continuing activity in publishing and distributing Lady Chatterley's Lover, and of his schemes for outwitting the many perpetrators of pirated copies."

In 2002, Squires and his wife, Lynn K. Talbot, produced Living at the Edge: A Biography of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen. The married couple were celebrities of their day, publishing books and associating with the notable Bloomsbury Group. But the marriage was not without its obstacles. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that Living at the Edge "may offer the last word on the Lawrence's volatile partnership, which was famously beset by sexual identity crises (his) and infidelities (hers)." Indeed, Lawrence struggled with latent homosexual tendencies; at the same time, von Richthofen left her first husband and children behind to take up with Lawrence.

In her assessment for the New Leader, Carolyn Heilbrun noticed that Squires and Talbot seek to maintain separate identifies for their subjects, even to the extent of using "his last name and her first" in the book. "This 'double biography' is, moreover, written by a married couple who bring to their work the 'lens of our own marriage,'" Heilbrun continued. "Squires and Talbot, perhaps because of this dual viewpoint, are especially astute in reading much in Lawrence's novels as disguised but evident messages to Frieda that he could not deliver any other way." The critic did feel that von Richthofen's role in the book—and the marriage—may have been less significant; "doesn't her entire claim upon our interest abide in her husband?" she asked. Still, Heilbrun summarized Living at the Edge as "a biography for anyone coming to Lawrence anew, or anyone wishing to revive an acquaintance with him." In reading this volume, she said, "we understand his unique interpretation of life, and his endless pursuit of its ideal form, which he never found."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, winter, 1984, review of D. H.Lawrence's "Lady": A New Look at "Lady Chatterley's Lover," p. 372.

British Book News, April, 1980, review of ThePastoral Novel: Studies in George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and D. H. Lawrence, p. 20; July, 1984, review of The Creation of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," p. 437.

Choice, May, 1984, review of The Creation of "LadyChatterley's Lover," p. 1310; November, 1990, review of The Challenge of D. H. Lawrence, p. 481.

Criticism, winter, 1985, review of The Creation of"Lady Chatterley's Lover," p. 103.

English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Number 3, 1991, review of D. H. Lawrence's Manuscripts, p. 119.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, April, 1992, review of The Challenge of D. H. Lawrence, p. 270.

Library Journal, September 15, 1990, review of TheChallenge of D. H. Lawrence, p. 78; June 15, 1991, review of D. H. Lawrence's Manuscripts, p. 76; May 15, 2002, Morris Hounion, review of Living at the Edge: A Biography of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen, p. 98.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 4, 1984, review of The Creation of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," p. 6.

Modern Fiction Studies, winter, 1984, review of TheCreation of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," p. 766; summer, 1985, review of D. H. Lawrence's "Lady," p. 357; winter, 1990, review of The Challenge of D. H. Lawrence, p. 604.

Modern Language Review, January, 1989, review of D. H. Lawrence's "Lady," p. 146.

New Leader, May-June, 2002, Carolyn Heilbrun, "A Search for Manhood," p. 38.

New York Times Book Review, September 22, 1991, review of D. H. Lawrence's Manuscripts, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, May 20, 2002, review of Living at the Edge, p. 61.

Review of English Studies, November, 1976, review of The Pastoral Novel, p. 510; November, 1995, Karen McLeod Hewitt, review of Lady Chatterley's Lover; A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" p. 606.

Southern Humanities Review, fall, 1986, review of D.H. Lawrence's "Lady", p. 385.

Times Literary Supplement, September 7, 1990, review of The Challenge of D. H. Lawrence, p. 940.

University Press Book News, June, 1990, review of The Challenge of D. H. Lawrence, p. 32.

Western Humanities Review, autumn, 1985, review of The Creation of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," p. 278.