David Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood, a coal-mining town in Nottinghamshire, England, the fourth child of a couple whose marriage Lawrence later described as “one carnal, bloody fight.” Lawrence’s psychologically intimate relationship with his mother would serve as the grounds for many of his novels. Lawrence studied to be a teacher but became interested in the arts. Jessie Chambers, a school love interest, submitted a number of Lawrence’s early poems to Ford Madox Ford, editor of The English Review, and he published them. This first exposure would prove to be fruitful, and Lawrence soon published several novels, including The White Peacock (1911) and The Trespasser (1912), as well as Love Poems and Others (1913).
Lawrence gained fame and notoriety in 1913 with the publication of Sons and Lovers, a novel which was criticized by some as being too overtly sexual. Sons and Lovers was followed by The Rainbow, a story of two sisters growing up in northern England that was banned upon its publication for its alleged obscenity. His novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was pronounced obscene and banned in the United Kingdom and America. Despite the censorship, Lawrence remained unapologetic for creating “art for my sake.” Lawrence’s personal life, including his elopement with Frieda von Richthofen, wife of one of his professors and the mother of three children, fueled the aura of scandal that followed him throughout his career.
Despite censorship and other setbacks, in his exceptionally prolific literary career Lawrence authored more than a dozen novels, three volumes of stories and three volumes of novellas, an immense collection of poetry, and numerous works of nonfiction, which he called his “Pollyanalyties.” He also wrote eight plays, most of which have been forgotten. The Lawrences traveled widely, but as Lawrence’s health worsened they settled in the south of France, where the author died on March 2, 1930. His ashes lie in a memorial chapel at his ranch in New Mexico.
The World of D. H. Lawrence and
Sons and Lovers
1885 David Herbert Lawrence is born on September 11 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a working-class mining town in central England. The sickly Lawrence is confined to bed for much of his early childhood and grows close to his mother, who tends to him.
1898-1901 Lawrence attends Nottingham High School on a scholarship, then takes a job as a clerk in a surgical appliance factory, but he leaves after suffering an attack of pneumonia. His brother, Ernest, dies in October 1901.
1902- Lawrence takes a part-time teaching job at the British
1906 Schools in Eastwood and attends a teacher-training center in Ilkeston.
1906 Lawrence enrolls at University College, Nottingham, to get his teacher’s certificate; he leaves after two years.
1909-1910 The English Review publishes several of Lawrence’s poems. His mother, Lydia, dies in December 1910; Lawrence assists her by administering an overdose of morphine.
1911 Lawrence’s first novel, The White Peacock, is published.
1912 Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of Lawrence’s former Nottingham professor Ernest Weekley and sister of famous aviator Manfred von Richthofen, run away to Germany and Italy.
1913 Rejected at first by Heinemann Publishers, the autobiographical Sons and Lovers is published. Criticized for his graphic depiction of sexual relations, Lawrence defends himself by stating that “whatever the blood feels, and believes, and says, is always true.”
1914 World War I breaks out. Lawrence and Frieda marry on July 13. Unable to obtain passports, for the duration of the war they are forced to live in various places in England, including Cornwall and Derbyshire, where they share a house with John Middleton Murray and the writer Katherine Mansfield.
1915 Upon the publication of The Rainbow, Lawrence is prosecuted for his liberal use of profanity and graphic descriptions of sex, and the novel is suppressed. More than 1,000 copies of the book are burned.
1916 Lawrence is introduced to Lady Ottoline Morrell, the wife of a liberal member of Parliament, and she becomes one of his most important patrons. Through her, Lawrence forms friendships with Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forster, and Bertrand Russell.
1917 Lawrence and Frieda are suspected of being spies for the Germans.
1919 The Lawrences journey throughout Europe, stopping in Sicily, Sardinia, and Switzerland. Lawrence publishes Women in Love, the sequel to The Rainbow, in Italy.
1920 He publishes Women in Love in New York.
1921 Women in Love is published in London. Movements in European History, Lawrence’s first major nonfiction work, is published, as is his Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.
1922 Aaron’s Rod, a novel that reflects the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on Lawrence, is published. The Lawrences travel to Ceylon