Married to the most popular English novelist of the twentieth century and the model for his major female figures - from Ursula in The Rainbow to Connie in Lady Chatterley's Lover - Frieda Lawrence has till now been seen only in her role as muse, mate and harridan. This book reassesses Frieda on her own terms. It looks at her childhood in Germany, her early marriage and painful experience of leaving her three young children, the dramatic and eventful years with D H Lawrence in Europe, England, Australia and Mexico and her life after Lawrence's death in 1930. We hear of her friendships with the Huxleys, Stravinsky, her unconventional views on Eliot, Pound and the Bloomsbury set, her notorious love affairs.

Illustrated with rare photographs, some previously unpublished, this is the first study to challenge the usual myths about Frieda Lawrence and to let her speak in her own voice. It includes substantial extracts from Frieda's letters and autobiographical writings, as well as a republication of her memoirs of her life with Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind.