Lawrence, D H

Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)

(born Sept. 11, 1885, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, Eng.—died March 2, 1930, Vence, France) English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and essayist. The son of a Midlands coal miner and an educated mother, he began to write in 1905 and earned a teaching certificate in 1908. Ford Madox Ford published much of Lawrence's early work in the English Review and helped place his first novel, The White Peacock (1911). Lawrence often drew his themes from his own life and relationships. Sons and Lovers (1913) is a clearly autobiographical novel about working-class family life. In 1914 he married a German woman, Frieda Weekley. The object of hostility and suspicion during World War I because of his pacifism and her origins, the couple lived in various countries after 1919, never returning to England. The Rainbow (1915) and its sequel, Women in Love (1920), trace the sickness of modern civilization to the effects of industrialization upon the human psyche. Kangaroo (1923) describes the persecution he experienced during the war. The Plumed Serpent (1926) was inspired by his fascination with Aztec culture. Lawrence's writing is notable for its intensity and its erotic sensuality; several of his works, including Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), were banned as obscene. He died of the tuberculosis that had plagued him from an early age.