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David Herbert Lawrence (11 September, 1885 - 2 March, 1930) was one of the most important, certainly one of the most controversial, English writers of the 20th century, who wrote novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, and letters.
The son of an ex-teacher and a coal miner, Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom. His mixture of working and middle class parents and their often volatile relationship had a great impact on the literature of this English writer. In 1902 he contracted pneumonia and his career as a factory clerk, which had barely started, came to an end. He began training as a teacher first teaching the sons of miners in his home town and then returning to education to receive a teaching certificate from University College Nottingham in 1908.
While working as a teacher in Croydon some of his poetry came to the attention of Ford Maddox Hueffer editor of The English Review and his career in literature began. Shortly after his first novel was published, The White Peacock, in 1910 Lawrence's mother died after a long illness. It is thought Lawrence may have helped his mother to die by giving her an overdose. Lawrence had an extremely close relationship with his mother and her death was a turning point in his life.
Pneumonia struck again soon after his mother's death and this lead to the tuberculosis which would eventually kill him. He decided on his recovery to abandon teaching to concentrate on writing. In 1912 Lawrence eloped to Germany with Frieda Weekley née von Richthofen (distant cousin of Manfred von Richthofen, also known as "the Red Baron"), the wife of his modern languages professor from university. They returned to England at the outbreak of World War I and were married on the 13 July, 1914. Because of Frieda's German parentage and Lawrence's pacifism they were viewed with suspicion in England during the war and lived in near poverty. They were even accused of spying and signalling German submarines off of the coast of Cornwall where they lived.
After the war Lawrence began what he termed his 'savage pilgrimage'. He left England, never to return, and with Frieda spent the rest of his life travelling, settling down for only short periods. His travels took him to France, Italy, Ceylon, Australia, America and Mexico. He dreamed of establishing a utopian community on a ranch in Taos, New Mexico but another bout of pneumonia forced him to return to Europe.
He died in Vence, France in 1930. Frieda returned to live on the ranch in Taos and later brought Lawrence's ashes to rest there.
His birthplace, in Eastwood, 8a Victoria Street, is now a museum.
Realism was the main feature of Lawrence's writings and his unflinching depictions of the gritty struggles of everyday life give many of his novels a melancholy tone. His poems help to balance this with many powerful an evocative descriptions of nature, although moments of beauty are present in his books.
Among his many works, most famous are his novels Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). These all take place in and around Eastwood, Lawrence's birthplace, which was a grim industrial mining town. Lawrence would return here in his literature despite leaving it in real life and it holds an importance to him in a similar way Wessex does for Thomas Hardy's whom Lawrence admired.
Kangaroo, Aaron's Rod and The Plumed Serpent are usually considered together as his "leadership novels". They contain some of the ideas that contributed to his plan for Rananim. The name meaning 'celebrations' and taken from a Hebrew folk song, this was the community of like-minded writers and artists that he hoped to establish in New Mexico but little came of it.
Part of the realist nature of his writing meant that he could not obscure the subjects of sex and love in his books and his descriptions of sex were shockingly frank for the period. The Rainbow was banned for its obscenity which consisted of the use of swear words and talk of sex and one publisher called Sons and Lovers "the dirtiest book he had ever read."
The publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover 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. He also produced a series of explicit expressionistic paintings later in life some of which were almost destroyed due to their depiction of pubic hair.
What is often forgotten amongst the claims of Lawrence as a pornographer is the fact that he was extremely religious. He was tired of the stifling Christianity of Europe and wished to rejuvenate it with earlier, tribal religions. This search for a primeval religious consciousness was part of the reason for his 'savage pilgrimage'. He was also inspired by contemporary 'process philosophy': for example works by Nietzsche, Henri Bergson and others, as well as by the works of Freud, most notably in Sons and Lovers which was also his most autobiographical work. He wished to free himself from the sexual restrictions of the past so that he could examine their place in religion but he would have been perhaps horrified if he realised his role in the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s.
Novels
Published posthumously
Unfinished
Poetry
Plays
Stories
Non-fiction
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