D. H. Lawrence

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Lore & Background

Lawrence was born on 11 September 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, the fourth child of Arthur John Lawrence, a barely literate miner at Brinsley Colliery, and Lydia Lawrence, a former pupil-teacher who had been obliged to perform manual work in a lace factory. His working class background and the tensions between his parents provided raw material for some of his early works. He roamed from an early age in the patches of open, hilly country and remaining fragments of Sherwood Forest in Felley woods, beginning a lifelong appreciation of the natural world. He attended Greasley Beauvale Board School from 1891 until 1898, becoming the first local pupil to win a county council scholarship to Nottingham High School. He left in 1901, working three months as a junior clerk at Haywood's surgical appliances factory, but a severe bout of pneumonia ended that career. During convalescence he often visited Hagg's Farm and began a friendship with Jessie Chambers, who would inspire characters in his writing. In a private letter written in 1908, Lawrence voiced support for eugenics by the method of a 'lethal chamber' to dispose of 'all the sick, the halt, the maimed'. He was an early supporter of the poet Anna Wickham, recommending her poetry for publication. From 1902 to 1906, Lawrence was a pupil-teacher at the British School in Eastwood. He received a teaching certificate from University College, Nottingham in 1908. In autumn 1908 he moved to London, teaching at Davidson Road School, Croydon, while continuing to write. Jessie Chambers submitted his early poetry to Ford Madox Hueffer, editor of The English Review, who commissioned the story 'Odour of Chrysanthemums'. Heinemann then asked Lawrence for more work. His first published novel, The White Peacock, appeared in 1910, shortly after his mother died of cancer, leaving him devastated. He broke off an engagement to Louie Burrows in February 1912. In March 1912, he met Frieda Weekley, six years his senior and married to his former modern languages professor Ernest Weekley; they eloped and left England for Metz, Germany. Lawrence was arrested and accused of being a British spy before being released. They walked south across the Alps to Italy, a journey recorded in Twilight in Italy. In Italy, Lawrence completed Sons and Lovers, published in 1913. He also wrote the first of his 'mining plays', The Daughter-in-Law, in Nottingham dialect, which was not performed or published in his lifetime. Lawrence and Frieda returned to Britain in 1913, befriending critic John Middleton Murry and writer Katherine Mansfield. On 28 July 1913, Lawrence met Welsh tramp poet W. H. Davies, whose nature poetry he initially admired but later cooled on, calling Nature Poems 'so thin, one can hardly feel them'. Back in Italy, in a cottage in Fiascherino on the Gulf of Spezia, he wrote the first draft of what became The Rainbow and Women in Love.

Reader's Guide

Lawrence's significance lies in his modernist challenge to conventional morality and literary form. His novels Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) were subjected to censorship trials for their radical portrayals of romance, sexuality, and use of explicit language. The Rainbow follows three generations of a Nottinghamshire farming family, focusing on daughter Ursula and her aspiration for a more fulfilling life. Women in Love explores complex relationships between four major characters, including Ursula and her sister Gudrun. Both novels were banned in the UK for obscenity—The Rainbow permanently, Women in Love only temporarily—in part due to frank treatment of sexual attraction and same-sex attraction: Ursula has an affair with a woman in The Rainbow, and there is an undercurrent of attraction between the two principal male characters in Women in Love. At his death, Lawrence was scorned as tasteless, avant-garde, and a pornographer who had only garnered success for erotica. However, novelist and critic E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, described him as 'the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation'. Later, literary critic F. R. Leavis championed both Lawrence's artistic integrity and his moral seriousness. Lawrence's voluntary exile, which he called a 'savage enough pilgrimage', shaped his perspective and output. His early support for eugenics remains a controversial aspect of his views.

Did You Know?

• Lawrence was the first local pupil to win a county council scholarship to Nottingham High School.
• In a private letter written in 1908, Lawrence voiced support for eugenics by the method of a 'lethal chamber' to dispose of 'all the sick, the halt, the maimed'.
• Lawrence was arrested and accused of being a British spy in Metz, Germany, before being released following an intervention from Frieda's father.
• His first 'mining play', The Daughter-in-Law, written in Nottingham dialect in 1912, was not performed or even published in Lawrence's lifetime.
• Novelist and critic E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, described Lawrence as 'the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation'.