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David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents.
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Quotations
But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.
Women in Love (1920) Ch. 15
Censors are dead men set up to judge between life and death. For no live, sunny man would be a censor, he'd just laugh.
Censors (1929)
Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.
Pornograpy and Obscenity (1929)
God is only a great imaginative experience.
Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, pt. 4, ed. by E. McDonald, (1936)
I can't stand Willy wet-leg, can't stand him at any price. He's resigned, and when you hit him he lets you hit him twice.
Willy Wet Leg (1929)
It was in 1915 the old world ended.
Kangaroo (1923) "The Nightmare"
Encyclopedia
David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. Lawrence is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in English literature, although some feminists object to the attitudes toward women and sexuality found in his works.
Biography
Early life
The fourth child of Arthur John Lawrence, a barely literate miner, and Lydia (née Beardsall), a former schoolmistress, Lawrence spent his formative years in the coal mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. His birthplace, in Eastwood, 8a Victoria Street, is now a museum. His working class background and the tensions between his parents provided the raw material for a number of his early works. Lawrence would return to this locality, which he was to call "the country of my heart," as a setting for much of his fiction.
The young Lawrence attended Beauvale Board School (now renamed Greasley Beauvale D. H. Lawrence Primary School in his honour) from 1891 until 1898, becoming the first local pupil to win a County Council scholarship to Nottingham High School in nearby Nottingham. There is a house in the Junior School named after him. He left in 1901, working for three months as a junior clerk at Haywood's surgical appliances factory before a severe bout of pneumonia ended this career. Whilst convalescing he often visited Haggs Farm, the home of the Chambers family and began a friendship with Jessie Chambers. An important aspect of this relationship with Jessie and other adolescent acquaintances was a shared love of books, an interest that lasted throughout Lawrence's life. In the years 1902 to 1906 Lawrence served as a pupil teacher at the British School, Eastwood. He went on to become a full-time student and received a teaching certificate from University College Nottingham in 1908. During these early years he was working on his first poems, some short stories, and a draft of a novel, Laetitia, that was eventually to become The White Peacock. At the end of 1907 he won a short story competition in the Nottingham Guardian, the first time that he had gained any wider recognition for his literary talents.
Wider horizons
In the autumn of 1908 the newly qualified Lawrence left his childhood home for London. While teaching in Davidson Road School, Croydon, he continued writing. Some of the early poetry, submitted by Jessie Chambers, came to the attention of Ford Madox Ford, then known as Ford Hermann Hueffer and editor of the influential The English Review. Hueffer then commissioned the story Odour of Chrysanthemums which, when published in that magazine, encouraged Heinemann, a London publisher, to ask Lawrence for more work. His career as a professional author now began in earnest, although he taught for a further year. Shortly after the final proofs of his first published novel The White Peacock appeared in 1910, Lawrence's mother died. She had been ill with cancer. The young man was devastated and he was to describe the next few months as his "sick year." It is clear that Lawrence had an extremely close relationship with his mother and his grief following her death became a major turning point in his life, just as the death of Mrs. Morel forms a major turning point in his autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers, a work that draws upon much of the writer's provincial upbringing.
In 1911 Lawrence was introduced to Edward Garnett, a publisher's reader, who acted as a mentor, provided further encouragement, and became a valued friend, as Garnett's son David was also. Throughout these months the young author revised Paul Morel, the first draft of what became Sons and Lovers. In addition, a teaching colleague, Helen Corke, gave him access to her intimate diaries about an unhappy love affair, which formed the basis of The Trespasser, his second novel. In November 1911, pneumonia struck once again. After recovering his health Lawrence decided to abandon teaching in order to become a full time author. He also broke off an engagement to Louie Burrows, an old friend from his days in Nottingham and Eastwood.
In March 1912 Lawrence met Frieda Weekley (nee von Richthofen), with whom he was to share the rest of his life. She was six years older than her new lover, married to Lawrence's former modern languages professor from Nottingham University, Ernest Weekley, and with three young children. She eloped with Lawrence to her parents' home in Metz, a garrison town then in Germany near the disputed border with France. Their stay here included Lawrence's first brush with militarism, when he was arrested and accused of being a British spy, before being released following an intervention from Frieda Weekley's father. After this encounter Lawrence left for a small hamlet to the south of Munich, where he was joined by Weekley for their "honeymoon," later memorialized in the series of love poems entitled Look! We Have Come Through (1917).
From Germany they walked southwards across the Alps to Italy, a journey that was recorded in the first of his travel books, a collection of linked essays entitled Twilight in Italy and the unfinished novel, Mr Noon. During his stay in Italy, Lawrence completed the final version of Sons and Lovers that, when published in 1913, was acknowledged to represent a vivid portrait of the realities of working class provincial life. Lawrence though, had become so tired of the work that he allowed Edward Garnett to cut about a hundred pages from the text.
Lawrence and Frieda returned to England in 1913 for a short visit. At this time, he now encountered and befriended critic John Middleton Murry and New Zealand-born short story writer Katherine Mansfield. Lawrence and Weekley soon went back to Italy, staying in a cottage in Fiascherino on the Gulf of Spezia. Here he started writing the first draft of a work of fiction that was to be transformed into two of his better-known novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love. Eventually, Weekley obtained her divorce. The couple returned to England at the outbreak of World War I and were married on 13 July 1914.
Weekley's German parentage and Lawrence's open contempt for militarism meant that they were viewed with suspicion in wartime England and lived in near destitution. The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed after an investigation into its alleged obscenity in 1915. Later, they were even accused of spying and signaling to German submarines off of the coast of Cornwall where they lived at Zennor. During this period he finished Women in Love. In it Lawrence explores the destructive features of contemporary civilization through the evolving relationships of four major characters as they reflect upon the value of the arts, politics, economics, sexual experience, friendship and marriage. This book is a bleak, bitter vision of humanity and proved impossible to publish in wartime conditions. Not published until 1920, it is now widely recognised as an English novel of great dramatic force and intellectual subtlety.
In late 1917, after constant harassment by the military authorities, Lawrence was forced to leave Cornwall at three days' notice under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). This persecution was later described in an autobiographical chapter of his Australian novel Kangaroo, published in 1923. He spent some months in early 1918 in the small, rural village of Hermitage near Newbury, Berkshire. He then lived for just under a year (mid-1918 to early 1919) at Mountain Cottage, Middleton-by-Wirksworth, Derbyshire, where he wrote one of his most poetic short stories, The Wintry Peacock. Until 1919 he was compelled by poverty to shift from address to address and barely survived a severe attack of influenza.
The savage pilgrimage begins
After the traumatic experience of the war years, Lawrence began what he termed his 'savage pilgrimage', a time of voluntary exile. He escaped from England at the earliest practical opportunity, to return only twice for brief visits, and with his wife spent the remainder of his life travelling. This wanderlust took him to Australia, Italy,
Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka), North America, Mexico and southern France.
Lawrence abandoned England in November 1919 and headed south; first to the Abruzzi region in central Italy and then onwards to Capri and the Fontana Vecchia in Taormina, Sicily. From Sicily he made brief excursions to Sardinia, Monte Cassino, Malta, Northern Italy, Austria and Southern Germany. Many of these places appeared in his writings. New novels included The Lost Girl (for which he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction), Aaron's Rod and the fragment entitled Mr Noon (the first part of which was published in the Phoenix anthology of his works, and the entirety in 1984). He experimented with shorter novels or novellas, such as The Captain's Doll, The Fox and The Ladybird. In addition, some of his short stories were issued in the collection England, My England and Other Stories. During these years he produced a number of poems about the natural world in Birds, Beasts and Flowers. Lawrence is widely recognized as one of the finest travel writers in the English language. Sea and Sardinia, a book that describes a brief journey from Taormina undertaken in January 1921, is a recreation of the life of the inhabitants of this part of the Mediterranean. Less well known is the brilliant memoir of Maurice Magnus (Memoirs of the Foreign Legion), in which Lawrence recalls his visit to the monastery of Monte Cassino. Other non-fiction books include two studies of Freudian psychoanalysis and Movements in European History, a school textbook that was published under a pseudonym, a reflection of his blighted reputation in England.
Later life and career
In late February 1922 the Lawrences left Europe behind with the intention of migrating to the United States. They sailed in an easterly direction, first to Ceylon and then on to Australia. A short residence in Darlington, Western Australia, which included an encounter with local writer Mollie Skinner, was followed by a brief stop in the small coastal town of Thirroul, New South Wales, during which Lawrence completed Kangaroo, a novel about local fringe politics that also revealed a lot about his wartime experiences in Cornwall.
The Lawrences finally arrived in the U.S. in September 1922. Here they encountered Mabel Dodge Luhan, a prominent socialite, and considered establishing a utopian community on what was then known as the Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico. They acquired the property, now called the D. H. Lawrence Ranch, in 1924 in exchange for the manuscript of Sons and Lovers. He stayed in New Mexico for two years, with extended visits to Lake Chapala and Oaxaca in Mexico.
While in the U.S., Lawrence rewrote and published Studies in Classic American Literature, a set of critical essays begun in 1917, and later described by Edmund Wilson as "one of the few first-rate books that have ever been written on the subject." These interpretations, with their insights into symbolism, New England Transcendentalism and the puritan sensibility, were a significant factor in the revival of the reputation of Herman Melville during the early 1920s. In addition, Lawrence completed a number of new fictional works, including The Boy in the Bush, The Plumed Serpent, St Mawr, The Woman who Rode Away, The Princess and assorted short stories. He also found time to produce some more travel writing, such as the collection of linked excursions that became Mornings in Mexico.
A brief voyage to England at the end of 1923 was a failure and he soon returned to Taos, convinced that his life as an author now lay in America. However, in March 1925 he suffered a near fatal attack of malaria and tuberculosis while on a third visit to Mexico. Although he eventually recovered, the diagnosis of his condition obliged him to return once again to Europe. He was dangerously ill and poor health limited his ability to travel for the remainder of his life.
The Lawrences made their home in a villa in Northern Italy, living near to Florence while he wrote The Virgin and the Gipsy and the various versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). The latter book, his last major novel, was initially published in private editions in Florence and Paris and reinforced his notoriety. Lawrence responded robustly to those who claimed to be offended, penning a large number of satirical poems, published under the title of "Pansies" and "Nettles", as well as a tract on Pornography and Obscenity.
The return to Italy allowed Lawrence to renew old friendships; during these years he was particularly close to Aldous Huxley, who was to edit the first collection of Lawrence's letters after his death, along with a memoir. With artist Earl Brewster, Lawrence visited a number of local archaeological sites in April 1927. The resulting essays describing these visits to old tombs were written up and collected together as Sketches of Etruscan Places, a beautiful book that contrasts the lively past with Benito Mussolini's fascism.
Lawrence continued to produce fiction, including short stories and The Escaped Cock (also published as The Man Who Died), an unorthodox reworking of the story of Jesus Christ's Resurrection. During these final years Lawrence renewed a serious interest in oil painting. Official harassment persisted and an exhibition of some of these pictures at the Warren Gallery in London was raided by the British police in mid 1929 and a number of works were confiscated. Nine of the Lawrence oils have been on permanent display in the La Fonda Hotel in Taos since shortly after his death. They hang in a small office behind the hotel's front desk and are available for viewing.
Death
Lawrence continued to write despite his failing health. In his last months he wrote numerous poems, reviews and essays, as well as a robust defence of his last novel against those who sought to suppress it. His last significant work was a reflection on the Book of Revelation, Apocalypse. After being discharged from a sanatorium, he died at the Villa Robermond in Vence, France due to complications from tuberculosis. Frieda Weekley returned to live on the ranch in Taos and later her third husband brought Lawrence's ashes to rest there in a small chapel set amid the mountains of New Mexico.
Sexuality
While writing Women in Love in Cornwall during 1916-17, Lawrence developed a strong and possibly romantic relationship with a Cornish farmer named William Henry Hocking. Although it is not absolutely clear if their relationship was sexual, Frieda Weekley said she believed it was. Lawrence's fascination with themes of homosexuality could also be related to his own sexual orientation. This theme is also overtly manifested in Women in Love. Indeed, in a letter written during 1913, he writes, "I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not…" He is also quoted as saying, "I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16."
Posthumous reputation
The obituaries following Lawrence's death were, with the notable exception of E. M. Forster, unsympathetic or hostile. However, there were those who articulated a more favourable recognition of the significance of this author's life and works. For example, his longtime friend Catherine Carswell summed up his life in a letter to the periodical Time and Tide published on 16 March 1930. In response to his critics, she claimed:
- In the face of formidable initial disadvantages and life-long delicacy, poverty that lasted for three quarters of his life and hostility that survives his death, he did nothing that he did not really want to do, and all that he most wanted to do he did. He went all over the world, he owned a ranch, he lived in the most beautiful corners of Europe, and met whom he wanted to meet and told them that they were wrong and he was right. He painted and made things, and sang, and rode. He wrote something like three dozen books, of which even the worst page dances with life that could be mistaken for no other man's, while the best are admitted, even by those who hate him, to be unsurpassed. Without vices, with most human virtues, the husband of one wife, scrupulously honest, this estimable citizen yet managed to keep free from the shackles of civilization and the cant of literary cliques. He would have laughed lightly and cursed venomously in passing at the solemn owls–each one secretly chained by the leg–who now conduct his inquest. To do his work and lead his life in spite of them took some doing, but he did it, and long after they are forgotten, sensitive and innocent people–if any are left–will turn Lawrence's pages and will know from them what sort of a rare man Lawrence was.
Aldous Huxley also defended Lawrence in his introduction to a collection of letters published in 1932. However, the most influential advocate of Lawrence's contribution to literature was the Cambridge literary critic F. R. Leavis who asserted that the author had made an important contribution to the tradition of English fiction. Leavis stressed that The Rainbow, Women in Love, and the short stories and tales were major works of art. Later, the Lady Chatterley Trial of 1960, and subsequent publication of the book, ensured Lawrence's popularity (and notoriety) with a wider public, and his work began to be included on many school and university English literature syllabuses.
A number of feminist critics, notably Kate Millett, have questioned Lawrence's sexual politics, and this questioning has damaged his reputation in some quarters since then. On the other hand, Lawrence continues to find an audience, and the ongoing publication of a new scholarly edition of his letters and writings has demonstrated the range of his achievement.
The charge of male chauvinism has tended to be lacking in balance. He held (seemingly contradictory) views espousing feminism. The evidence of his written works does indicate an overwhelming commitment to representing women as strong, independent and complex. He produced major works in which young, self-directing female characters were central.
Harrison drew attention to the vein of sadism that runs through Lawrence's writing.
Works
Novels
Lawrence is perhaps best known for his novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Within these Lawrence explores the possibilities for life and living within an Industrial setting. In particular Lawrence is concerned with the nature of relationships that can be had within such settings. Though often classed as a realist, Lawrence's use of his characters can be better understood with reference to his philosophy. His use of sexual activity, though shocking at the time, has its roots in this highly personal way of thinking and being. It is worth noting that Lawrence was very interested in human touch behaviour (see Haptics) and that his interest in physical intimacy has its roots in a desire to restore our emphasis on the body, and re-balance it with what he perceived to be western civilization's slow process of over-emphasis on the mind. In his later years Lawrence developed the potentialities of the short novel form in St Mawr, The Virgin and the Gypsy and The Escaped Cock.
Short stories
Lawrence wrote many short stories. The best-known include The Captain's Doll, The Fox, The Ladybird, Odour of Chrysanthemums, The Princess, The Rocking-Horse Winner, St Mawr, The Virgin and the Gypsy and The Woman who Rode Away. (The Virgin and the Gypsy was published after he died as a novella.)
Among his most praised collections, The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, published in 1916, provides insight into Lawrence's attitudes during World War I. His collection The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, published in 1928, develops his themes of leadership that he also explored in novels such as Kangaroo, The Plumed Serpent and Fanny and Annie.
Poetry
Although best known for his novels, Lawrence wrote almost 800 poems, most of them relatively short. His first poems were written in 1904 and two of his poems, Dreams Old and Dreams Nascent, were among his earliest published works in The English Review. His early works clearly place him in the school of Georgian poets, a group not only named after the present monarch but also to the romantic poets of the previous Georgian period whose work they were trying to emulate. What typified the entire movement, and Lawrence's poems of the time, were well-worn poetic tropes and deliberately archaic language. Many of these poems displayed what John Ruskin referred to as the "pathetic fallacy," which is the tendency to ascribe human emotions to animals and even inanimate objects.
- It was the flank of my wife
- I touched with my hand, I clutched with my hand,
- rising, new-awakened from the tomb!
- It was the flank of my wife
- whom I married years ago
- at whose side I have lain for over a thousand nights
- and all that previous while, she was I, she was I;
- I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was touched.
-- excerpt, New Heaven and Earth
Just as World War I dramatically changed the work of many of the poets who saw service in the trenches, Lawrence's own work saw a dramatic change, during his years in Cornwall. During this time, he wrote free verse influenced by Walt Whitman. He set forth his manifesto for much of his later verse in the introduction to New Poems. "We can get rid of the stereotyped movements and the old hackneyed associations of sound or sense. We can break down those artificial conduits and canals through which we do so love to force our utterance. We can break the stiff neck of habit...But we cannot positively prescribe any motion, any rhythm."
Lawrence rewrote many of his novels several times to perfect them and similarly he returned to some of his early poems when they were collected in 1928. This was in part to fictionalise them, but also to remove some of the artifice of his first works. As he put in himself: "A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand over the demon's mouth sometimes and speaks for him." His best known poems are probably those dealing with nature such as those in Birds Beasts and Flowers and Tortoises. Snake, one of his most frequently anthologised, displays some of his most frequent concerns; those of man's modern distance from nature and subtle hints at religious themes.
- In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
- I came down the steps with my pitcher
- And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
-- excerpt, Snake
Look! We have come through! is his other work from the period of the end of the war and it reveals another important element common to much of his writings; his inclination to lay himself bare in his writings. Although Lawrence could be regarded as a writer of love poems, his usually deal in the less romantic aspects of love such as sexual frustration or the sex act itself. Ezra Pound in his Literary Essays complained of Lawrence's interest in his own "disagreeable sensations" but praised him for his "low-life narrative." This is a reference to Lawrence's dialect poems akin to the Scots poems of Robert Burns, in which he reproduced the language and concerns of the people of Nottinghamshire from his youth.
- Tha thought tha wanted ter be rid o' me.
'Appen tha did, an' a'.
- Tha thought tha wanted ter marry an' se
- If ter couldna be master an' th' woman's boss,
- Tha'd need a woman different from me,
- An' tha knowed it; ay, yet tha comes across
Ter say goodbye! an' a'.
-- excerpt, The Drained Cup
Pound was the chief proponent of modernist poetry and although Lawrence's works after his Georgian period are clearly in the Modernist tradition, they were often very different to many other modernist writers. Modernist works were often austere works in which every word was carefully worked on and hard-fought for. Lawrence felt all poems had to be personal sentiments and that spontaneity was vital for any work. He called one collection of poems Pansies partly for the simple ephemeral nature of the verse but also a pun on the French word panser, to dress or bandage a wound. His wounds still needed soothing for the reception he regularly received in England with The Noble Englishman and Don't Look at Me being removed from the official edition of Pansies on the grounds of obscenity. Even though he lived most of the last ten years of his life abroad, his thoughts were often still on England. His last work Nettles published in 1930 just eleven days after his death were a series of bitter, "nettling" but often amusing attacks on the moral climate of England.
- O the stale old dogs who pretend to guard
- the morals of the masses,
- how smelly they make the great back-yard
- wetting after everyone that passes.
-- excerpt, The Young and Their Moral Guardians
Two notebooks of Lawrence's unprinted verse were posthumously published as Last Poems and More Pansies. These contain two of Lawrence's most famous poems about death, Bavarian Gentians and The Ship of Death.
Literary criticism
Lawrence's criticism of other authors often provides great insight into his own thinking and writing. Of particular note is his Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays and Studies in Classic American Literature. In the latter, Lawrence's responses to Whitman, Melville and Edgar Allan Poe shed particular light on the nature of Lawrence's craft.
Philosophy
Lawrence continued throughout his life to develop his highly personal philosophy, many aspects of which would prefigure the counterculture of the 1960s. In fact, he was referenced in one of the most iconic films about 1960s counterculture Easy Rider. His unpublished introduction to Sons and Lovers established the duality central to much of his fiction. This is done with reference to the Holy Trinity. As his philosophy develops, Lawrence moves away from more direct Christian analogies and instead touches upon Mysticism, Buddhism, and Pagan theologies. In some respects, Lawrence was a forerunner of the growing interest in the occult that occurred in the 20th century, though he would have identified himself as a Christian.
Paintings
D. H. Lawrence had a lifelong interest in painting, which became one of his main forms of expression in his last years. These were exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London's Mayfair in 1929. The exhibition was extremely controversial, with many of the 13,000 people visiting mainly to gawk. The Daily Express claimed "Fight with an Amazon represents a hideous, bearded man holding a fair-haired woman in his lascivious grip while wolves with dripping jaws look on expectantly, [this] is frankly indecent", but several artists and art experts praised the paintings. Gwen John, reviewing the exhibition in Everyman, spoke of Lawrence's "stupendous gift of self-expression" and singled out The Finding of Moses, Red Willow Trees and Boccaccio Story as "pictures of real beauty and great vitality". Others singled out Contadini for special praise. After a complaint from a member of the public, the police seized thirteen of the twenty-five paintings on view (including Boccaccio Story and Contadini). Despite declarations of support from many writers, artists and members of parliament, Lawrence was able to recover his paintings only by undertaking never to exhibit them in England again. The largest collection of the paintings is now at La Fonda hotel in Taos, New Mexico. Several, including Boccaccio Story and Resurrection are at the Humanities Research Centre of the University of Texas at Austin.
Quotation
- "Be a good animal, true to your instincts." --
The White Peacock "Mrs Morel always said the after-life would hold nothing in store for her husband: he rose from the lower world into purgatory, when he came home from pit, and passed into heaven in the Palmerston Arms." -- Sons and Lovers (edited out of the 1913 edition, restored in 1992) "I think I am much too valuable a creature to offer myself to a German bullet gratis and for fun." -- Letter to Harriet Monroe, 1 October 1914 "Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up." -- Women in Love "Never trust the artist. Trust the tale." -- Studies in Classic American Literature (also rendered as "Never trust the teller; trust the tale.") "Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically." -- opening sentence of Lady Chatterley's Lover "Her father was not a coherent human being, he was a roomful of old echoes." -- Women in Love "They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all." -- "Whales Weep Not" "If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down" -- The Rainbow "I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself." -- "Self-Pity" "If I had my way I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and the main streets and bring them in; all the sick, the halt, and the maimed"
List of Lawrence's works
Novels
The White Peacock (1911), edited by Andrew Robertson, Cambridge University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-521-22267-2 The Trespasser (1912), edited by Elizabeth Mansfield, Cambridge University Press,1981, ISBN 0-521-22264-8 Sons and Lovers (1913), edited by Helen Baron and Carl Baron, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-24276-2 The Rainbow (1915), edited by Mark Kinkead-Weekes, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-00944-8 Women in Love (1920), edited by David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-23565-0 The Lost Girl (1920), edited by John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 1981, ISBN 0-521-22263-X Aaron's Rod (1922) edited by Mara Kalnins, Cambridge University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-521-25250-4 Kangaroo (1923) edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-521-38455-9 The Boy in the Bush (1924), edited by Paul Eggert, Cambridge University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-521-30704-X The Plumed Serpent (1926), edited by L. D. Clark, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-22262-1 Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), edited by Michael Squires, Cambridge University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-521-22266-4 The Escaped Cock (1929) (later re-published as The Man Who Died) The Virgin and the Gypsy (1930)
Short stories
The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914), edited by John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-521-24822-1 England, My England and Other Stories (1922), edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-521-35267-3 The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird (1923), edited by Dieter Mehl, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-35266-5 St Mawr and other stories (1925), edited by Brian Finney, Cambridge University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-521-22265-6 The Woman who Rode Away and other stories (1928) edited by Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-521-22270-2. The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories (1930), edited by Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones, Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 2006 (forthcoming), ISBN 0-521-36607-0 Love Among the Haystacks and other stories (1930), edited by John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-26836-2 Collected Stories (1994) - Everyman's Library, a comprehensive one volume edition that prints all sixty two of Lawrence's shorter fictions in chronological sequence The Rocking-Horse Winner (1926) The Horse Dealer's Daughter (1922)
"The Odour of Chrysanthemums" (written between 1901 and 1914)
Poetry
Love Poems and others (1913) Amores (1916) Look! We have come through! (1917) New Poems (1918) Bay: a book of poems (1919) Tortoises (1921) Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) The Collected Poems of D H Lawrence (1928) Pansies (1929) Nettles (1930) Last Poems (1932) Fire and other poems (1940) The Complete Poems of D H Lawrence (1964), ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts D. H. Lawrence: Selected Poems (1972), ed. Keith Sagar.
Plays
The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (1914)"last lesson of the afternoon" Touch and Go (1920) David (1926) The Fight for Barbara (1933) A Collier's Friday Night (1934) The Married Man (1940) The Merry-go-round (1941) The Complete Plays of D H Lawrence (1965) The Plays, edited by Hans-Wilhelm Schwarze and John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-24277-0
Non-fiction
Study of Thomas Hardy and other essays (1914), edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 1985, ISBN 0-521-25252-0, Literary criticism and metaphysics Movements in European History (1921), edited by Philip Crumpton, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-26201-1, Originally published under the name of Lawrence H. Davison Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious (1921/1922), edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 2004 ISBN 0-521-32791-1 Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), edited by Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-55016-5 Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and other essays (1925), edited by Michael Herbert, Cambridge University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-521-26622-X A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover(1929) - Lawrence wrote this pamphlet to explain his most notorious novel Apocalypse and the writings on Revelation (1931) edited by Mara Kalnins, Cambridge University Press, 1980, ISBN 0-521-22407-1, His last book touching on primitive symbolism, paganism and pre-Christian religion Phoenix: the posthumous papers of D H Lawrence (1936) Phoenix II: uncollected, unpublished and other prose works by D H Lawrence (1968) Introductions and Reviews, edited by N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-83584-4 Late Essays and Articles, edited by James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-58431-0 Selected Letters, Oneworld Classics, 2008. Edited by James T. Boulton. ISBN 978-1-84749-049-0
Travel books
Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916), edited by Paul Eggert, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-521-26888-5 Sea and Sardinia (1921), edited by Mara Kalnins, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-24275-4 Mornings in Mexico (1927) Sketches of Etruscan Places and other Italian essays (1932), edited by Simonetta de Filippis, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-25253-9
Works translated by Lawrence
All Things are Possible (1920) Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin The Gentleman from San Francisco (1922), tr. with S. S. Koteliansky Giovanni Verga Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1923) Giovanni Verga Little Novels of Sicily (1925) Giovanni Verga Cavalleria Rusticana and other stories (1928) Antonio Francesco Grazzini The Story of Doctor Manente (1929)
Manuscripts and early drafts of published novels and other works
Scholarly studies of Lawrence's existing manuscripts reveal him to have been a careful craftsman. He often revised his works in a radical way by rewriting them, often over a period of years. Given this, it is interesting to compare these earlier drafts with the final, published versions
Paul Morel (1911-12), edited by Helen Baron, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-56009-8, an early manuscript version of Sons and Lovers The First Women in Love (1916-17) edited by John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-37326-3 Mr Noon (1920?) - Parts I and II, edited by Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25251-2 The Symbolic Meaning: The Uncollected Versions of Studies in Classic American Literature, edited by Armin Arnold, Centaur Press, 1962 Quetzalcoatl (1925), edited by Louis L Martz, W W Norton Edition, 1998, ISBN 0-8112-1385-4, Early draft of The Plumed Serpent The First and Second Lady Chatterley novels, edited by Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-47116-8. These two books,The First Lady Chatterley and John Thomas and Lady Jane were earlier drafts of Lawrence's last novel
Letters
The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume I, September 1901 - May 1913, ed. James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-521-22147-1 The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume II, June 1913 - October 1916, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1981, ISBN 0-521-23111-6 The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume III, October 1916 - June 1921, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-23112-4 The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume IV, June 1921 - March 1924 , ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-00695-3 The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume V, March 1924 - March 1927, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-00696-1 The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume VI, March 1927 - November 1928 , ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-521-00698-8 The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume VII, November 1928 - February 1930, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-521-00699-6 The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, with index, Volume VIII, ed. James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-23117-5 The Selected Letters of D H Lawrence, Compiled and edited by James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-40115-1
Paintings
The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence,London: Mandrake Press, 1929. D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, ed. Keith Sagar, London: Chaucer Press, 2003. The Collected Art Works of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Tetsuji Kohno, Tokyo: Sogensha,2004.
Works about Lawrence
Bibliographic resources
The Works of D H Lawrence: a Chronological Checklist (Nottingham, D H Lawrence Society) Paul Poplawski (1996) D. H. Lawrence: A Reference Companion (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press) P. Preston (1994) A D H Lawrence Chronology (London, Macmillan) W. Roberts and P. Poplawski (2001)A Bibliography of D H Lawrence. 3rd ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) Charles L Ross and Dennis Jackson, eds. (1995) Editing D H Lawrence: New Versions of a Modern Author (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press) Keith Sagar (1979) D H Lawrence: a Calendar of his Works (Manchester, Manchester University Press) Keith Sagar (1982) D H Lawrence Handbook (Manchester, Manchester University Press)
Biographical studies
The Savage Pilgrimage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, reissued 1981) Frieda Lawrence (1934) Not I, But The Wind (Santa Fe: Rydal Press) E. T. (Jessie Chambers Wood) (1935) D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (Jonathan Cape) Edward Nehls (1957-59) D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, Volumes I-III (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press) Emile Delavenay (1972) D. H. Lawrence: The Man and his Work: The Formative Years, 1885-1919, trans. Katherine M. Delavenay (London: Heinemann) Harry T. Moore (1974) The Priest of Love: A Life of D. H. Lawrence (Heinemann) Paul Delany (1979) D. H. Lawrence's Nightmare: The Writer and his Circle in the Years of the Great War (Hassocks: Harvester Press) G H Neville (1981) A Memoir of D. H. Lawrence: The Betrayal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) John Worthen (1991) D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years, 1885 - 1912 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Mark Kincaid-Weekes (1996) D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile, 1912 - 1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Brenda Maddox (1994) D. H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage (W. W. Norton & Co) David Ellis (1998) D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922 - 1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Keith Sagar (2003) The Life of D. H. Lawrence: An Illustrated Biography (London: Chaucer Press) John Worthen (2005) D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (London: Penguin/Allen Lane) Scandalous! the musical based on the life of D. H. Lawrence. Created by Glyn Bailey, Keith Thomas and Theasa Tuohy. Website
Drama
Look! We Have Come Through! based on the letters and works of D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda. Scripted by James Petosa and Carole Graham Lehan. Nominated for Helen Hayes Award 1998
Musical Theatre
- Scandalous! the musical based on the life of D. H. Lawrence. Created by Glyn Bailey, Keith Thomas and Theasa Tuohy. Website:
Literary criticism
D. H. Lawrence: Language and Being (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Richard Beynon, (ed.) (1997) D. H. Lawrence: The Rainbow and Women in Love (Cambridge: Icon Books) Michael Black (1986) D H Lawrence: The Early Fiction (Palgrave MacMillan) Michael Black (1991) D. H. Lawrence: The Early Philosophical Works: A Commentary (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan) Michael Black (1992) Sons and Lovers (Cambridge University Press) Michael Black (2001) Lawrence's England: The Major Fiction, 1913 - 1920 (Palgrave-MacMillan) Keith Brown, ed. (1990) Rethinking Lawrence, Milton Keynes: Open University Press Anthony Burgess (1985) Flame Into Being: The Life And Work Of D. H. Lawrence (William Heinemann) Aidan Burns (1980) Nature and Culture in D. H. Lawrence (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan) L D Clark (1980) The Minoan Distance: The Symbolism of Travel in D H Lawrence, University of Arizona Press Colin Clarke (1969) River of Dissolution: D. H. Lawrence and English Romanticism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) Joseph Davis (1989) "D.H. Lawrence at Thirroul (Collins, Sydney, Australia) Carol Dix (1980) D H Lawrence and Women, Macmillan R P Draper (1970) D H Lawrence: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Anne Fernihough (1993) D. H. Lawrence: Aesthetics and Ideology (Oxford:Clarendon Press) Anne Fernihough, ed. (2001) The Cambridge Companion to D H Lawrence (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) Graham Holderness (1982) D. H. Lawrence: History, Ideology and Fiction (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan) John R. Harrison (1966) The Reactionaries: Yeats, Lewis, Pound, Eliot, Lawrence: A Study of the Anti-Democratic Intelligentsia (Victor Gollancz, London) Graham Hough (1956) The Dark Sun: A Study of D H Lawrence, Duckworth John Humma (1990) Metaphor and Meaning in D. H. Lawrence's Later Novels, University of Missouri Press Frank Kermode (1973) Lawrence (London: Fontana) Mark Kinkead - Weekes (1968) The Marble and the Statue: The Exploratory Imagination of D. H. Lawrence, pp. 371-418. in Gregor, lan and Maynard Mack (eds.), Imagined Worlds: Essays in Honour of John Butt (London: Methuen,) F. R. Leavis (1955) D H Lawrence: Novelist (London, Chatto and Windus) F. R. Leavis (1976) Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in D H Lawrence (London, Chatto and Windus) Sheila Macleod (1985) Lawrence's Men and Women (London: Heinemann) Barbara Mensch (1991) D. H. Lawrence and the Authoritarian Personality (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan) Kate Millett (1970) Sexual Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday) Colin Milton (1987) Lawrence and Nietzsche: A Study in Influence (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press) Robert E Montgomery (1994) The Visionary D. H. Lawrence: Beyond Philosophy and Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Alastair Niven (1978) D. H. Lawrence: The Novels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Cornelia Nixon (1986) Lawrence's Leadership Politics and the Turn Against Women (Berkeley: University of California Press) Tony Pinkney (1990) D. H. Lawrence (London and New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf) Charles L. Ross (1991) Women in Love: A Novel of Mythic Realism (Boston, Mass.: Twayne) Keith Sagar (1966) The Art of D H Lawrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Keith Sagar (1985) D H Lawrence: Life into Art (University of Georgia Press) Keith Sagar (2008) D. H. Lawrence: Poet (Penrith: Humanities-Ebooks) Daniel J. Schneider (1986) The Consciousness of D. H. Lawrence: An Intellectual Biography (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas) Michael Squires and Keith Cushman (1990) The Challenge of D. H. Lawrence (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press) Peter Widdowson , ed. (1992) D. H. Lawrence (London and New York: Longman) John Worthen (1979) D. H. Lawrence and the Idea of the Novel (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan). T R Wright (2000) D H Lawrence and the Bible (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
External links
Biographies
Works
Criticism
- by Joyce Carol Oates (1974)
- by Joyce Carol Oates (1978)
- by Juliette Feyel
- by Keith Sagar.
Other
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- Review of Michael Black's
Lawrence's England: Thomas L. Jeffers, “Lawrence’s Major Phase,” Yale Review 90 (Summer 2002), 148-58. Review of John Worthen's biography of D. H. Lawrence, "Mythic Patterns in 'The Plumed Serpent'" http://litscholar.net/plumed%20serpent/ThePlumedSerpent.htm "Memoirs of the Foreign Legion" http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300711.txt
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