D. H. Lawrence is often seen either as an artist whose novels are spoiled by the intrusion of ideas or as a philosopher whose ideas happen to be expressed in fiction; neither of these perspectives does justice to the unity and complexity of Lawrence's vision. In The Visionary D. H. Lawrence Robert E. Montgomery places Lawrence in the tradition both of great Romantic poet-philosophers, including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Carlyle and Emerson, and of visionary thinkers Nietzsche, Heraclitus and Jacob Boehme. Dr Montgomery reveals a context which illuminates Lawrence's fiction and non-fiction, discusses his work in depth, and shows how his place in the prophetic-poetic tradition differs from that of his contemporaries Eliot and Yeats. The result is an exploration of the vision that informs and unifies Lawrence's work.

"...provides us with a history of ideas behind Lawrence's texts, and encourages us to make our own further connections between Lawrence and his 'parallel' minds. The prose, given the complexity of the subject matter, is on the whole clear and compelling....The Visionary D.H. Lawrence is a useful companion piece for our readings of Lawrence's works." Judith Ruderman, English Literature in Transition