John Worthen taught at universities in North America and Wales before becoming Professor of D. H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he remains Emeritus Professor.[1] His inaugural lecture as Professor of D H Lawrence Studies was published under the title Cold Hearts and Coronets [2] His career as Lawrence’s biographer began in the 1980s and culminated in the celebrated D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885–1912, the first part of the definitive three-volume Cambridge biography (Cambridge University Press, 1991–8). Material from this project later formed the foundation of Worthen's single volume study, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005).
Though based in Lawrence’s hometown of Nottingham, he has researched and travelled around the world to complete this portrait of the writer. In 2007 he published a life of the musician Robert Schumann and since then has completed a short biography of T. S. Eliot. He is now working on a book about S. T. Coleridge and a life of Frieda Lawrence.
In addition to this biographical work, Professor Worthen has edited or co-edited seven individual volumes in The Cambridge Edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence series.