| |
D.H. Lawrence Biography |
David Herbert Lawrence (September 11, 1885 - March 2, 1930) was one of the most important English writers of the 20th century.
The son of a teacher and a coal miner, Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom. His working class parentage had a great impact on the literary style of this British writer who wrote novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, and letters. He also produced a series of explicit expressionistic paintings later in life. He married Frieda Weekley née von Richthofen (distant cousin of Manfred von Richthofen, aka "the Red Baron"), on July 13, 1914.
Among his many works, very famous are his novels Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). The publication of the latter caused a scandal due to its explicit sex scenes and perhaps particularly because the lover was working-class, and an obscenity trial followed in Britain. The British publisher, Penguin Books, won the court case that ensued. This was not the only controversial novel by the author, for instance The Rainbow was banned for its obscenity which consisted of the use of swear words and talk of sex. Several of his paintings were almost destroyed due to their depiction of pubic hair.
He died in Vence, France.
His birthplace, in Eastwood, 8a Victoria Street, is now a museum.
Partial list of works
Novels
The White Peacock (1911) - the tragedy of a man who marries the wrong woman
The Tresspasser (1912)
Sons and Lovers (1913) - called Paul Morel while in progress
The Rainbow (1915) - criticised for obscenity and copies were destroyed
Women in Love (1920) - sequel to 'The rainbow'
The Lost Girl (1920)
Aaron's Rod (1922) - about a man who walks out on his wife, with whom he has a destructive relationship, in order to start a new life
The Fox (1923) - short novel
The Captain's Doll (1923) - short novel, about an abandoned marriage and subsequent loveless affair
The Ladybird (1923) - short novel
Kangaroo (1923)
The Boy in the bush (1924) - written from a manuscript given to him by Molly Skinner.
St. Mawr (1925) - short novel, one of his two North American fictions
The Plumed Serpent (1926) - called Quetzalcoatl in progress and is about an English woman experiencing a religious revolution in Mexico
The Woman Who Rode Away (1928) - one of his two North American fictions about a woman who gives herself up to a group of Native Americans. this novel reveals much about Lawerence's opinion of American consciousness
The Escaped Cock/The Man Who Died (1929)
Lady Chatterley's Lover (printed privately in Florence during 1928, banned in the UK until 1960) - his most famous and highest earning novel. A story of a middle-class woman and her enlightening sexual relationship (written quite explicitly) with a gamekeeper - an outsider even to the working class. The novel condones their relationship, and is a story about living and loving passionately.
Published posthumously
Mr Noon (1984)
Vigin and the gypsy (1930)
Unfinished
The Flying Fish
Poetry
Love Poems and others (1913)
Look! We Have Come Through! (1917)
New Poems (1918)
Bay : a book of poems (1919)
Birds, beasts and flowers (1923)
Pansies (1929)
Plays
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (1914)
A Collier's Friday Night (1934)
Touch and Go (1920)
David (1926)- A modern man developing out of the primordial religious self
Mornings in Mexico (1927)
Stories
The Prussian Officer and other stories (1914)
Non-fiction
Movements in European history (1921)
Psychoanalysis and the unconscious (1921)
Fantasia of the unconscious (1922)
Studies in classic American literature (1923)
Sea and Sardinia (1921) - travel book
Apocalypse (1931) - His last book touching on primitive symbolism, paganism and pre-Christian ideology |
| |
| D.H. Lawrence Resources |
| |
|
|
|
