ABOUT BOOK

Lawrence wrote a number of crude, defiant, and theatrical romances of contemporary life, proclaiming his gospel of victorious manhood. His physical force doctrine was called by detractors the creed of "Muscular Blackguardism." Guy is his representative hero, a Byronic, arrogant, aristocratic, young man of prodigious bodily strength and implacable temper--a Berserk out of his element in an age of peace and civilization, who discharges his pent up energies in libertine amours and physical sports, in the lack of more serious fields for his prowess. His fellows, including the old crony who writes the memoir, love him in spite of his cruelty and egoism. The supposed biographer introduces congenial anecdotes such as the defence of a house against Irish moonlighters by a handful of gentlemen, with tremendous carnage. Brilliantly satirized in Bret Harte's Condensed Novels.