D.H. Lawrence

Biography by Pericles Lewis A prolific poet, painter, and essayist, D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) is today best known for his novels, which remain popular with a general reading public in part because he maintained conventional syntax and grammar and fairly straightforward plots, such as the chronicle of several generations in the life of a family. Thematically, however,… Continue Reading D.H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterly’s Lover

by Pericles Lewis Like E.M. Forster’s Maurice, Lawrence’s most controversial novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, could not be published as written in England during his lifetime. Privately printed in Italy in 1928, the novel revolves like Maurice around the relationship between an upper-class figure and a game-keeper. Here, the upper-class lover is a woman, Lady Chatterley,… Continue Reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover

Fish

by Sam Alexander “Fish” is the best known poem in D.H. Lawrence’s Birds, Beasts, and Flowers (1923). As he does throughout this volume, Lawrence in this poem uses an encounter with an animal to explore some of his characteristic concerns: the importance of reclaiming instinctual life from the intellectual abstraction of modern life, the need… Continue Reading Fish

The Rainbow

By Natalie Prizel and Steven Hobbs D.H. Lawrence drafted The Rainbow, originally titled “The Sisters,” from March 1913 to September 1915. At first, he worked on two other novels simultaneously while traveling with his new wife, Frieda—a woman six years his senior.[2] Eventually, he jettisoned these two narratives—one after writing over two hundred pages—because he felt… Continue Reading The Rainbow

Study of Thomas Hardy

by Sam Alexander D.H. Lawrence’s Study of Thomas Hardy (1914) began as a commission for the “Writers of the Day” series published by James Nisbet and co., but grew so far beyond its ostensible subject that Lawrence had to abandon the hope of publication. By 1915, he had even renamed it “Le Gai Savaire” (pseudo-French… Continue Reading Study of Thomas Hardy

Amores

by Sam Alexander Because of its position in D.H. Lawrence’s oeuvre, Amores (1916) has not received as much critical attention as the volume that followed it, Look! We Have Come Through (1917). Grouped with the “Rhyming Poems” in the Penguin edition of Lawrence’s poetry, it predates the more experimental, Whitmanesque free verse through which Lawrence has… Continue Reading Amores