If we are to establish that Lawrence is a comic writer in more than just a handful of ‘unusual’ instances, and in a way that goes beyond the merely adventitious, then we need to demonstrate the existence in his work of deliberately designed and systematically sustained comic strategies that might together be seen to define a distinctive comic style.

Literary style is a notoriously difficult thing to delimit in any simple and clear-cut way, but it must at least have something to do with recurring patterns of linguistic choice, and with strategies of narration in such things as choice of narrator(s), control of perspectives and orchestration of voices. And it is with these two broad categories – of linguistic choice and narrative strategy – that I want to begin the task of defining the style of Lawrence's comedy as it functions in its satiric aspect within St. Mawr.

My essay has two immediate aims, therefore: to demonstrate that in St. Mawr Lawrence does indeed employ strategies of linguistic patterning and narrative method that are systematically designed for satiric purposes; and to analyse some of the detail of these strategies as a step towards defining Lawrence's satiric method. A concern to establish a critical view of Lawrence as not simply a comic writer, but an accomplished craftsman and stylist in comic art, defines a third, longer-term goal for the essay.