Lawrence, D. H. LiteraryTraveler.com

Lawrence, D. H.

D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885 in Eastwood, England. His father was a coalminer, his mother a former schoolteacher. The difference in his parents' social class was to later become a theme within his work. Lawrence was the first boy from his school to win an annual grant that allowed him to attend Nottingham High School and he later attended Nottingham University to become a teacher. During his last year in high school, Lawrence met Jessie Chambers who would become the model for the character Miriam Leviers in Sons and Lovers. After University, Lawrence taught during the day and wrote in the evening. Jessie sent some of his poems to the English Review, and his work was first published in the 1909 issue. Two years later Lawrence would break his engagement to Jessie and in 1912, he became severely ill and gave up teaching.

At the age of twenty-six D.H. Lawrence met Frieda von Richthofen Weekly, thirty-two, the wife of his former French professor. Within the year, Lawrence and Frieda would elope, traveling to Germany and Italy. In Italy, he took up the name Lorenzo and established his first Italian residence at Lake Garda. It is assumed that he chose Lake Garda after reading Goethe's Italian Journey. In 1913, Sons and Lovers was published and a year later Frieda divorced her husband and married Lawrence. In 1915, The Rainbow, a chronicle of an English family that talked about the sexual life of the characters, was published and then suppressed for indecency. During World War I, Lawrence and Frieda lived in Cornwall and were frequently harassed due to Frieda being German and Lawrence's opposition to the war. Lawrence was put under government surveillance, denied the right to travel to America, and in 1917, expelled from Cornwall on suspicion of spying.

In 1919, Lawrence was finally allowed to leave England; he was critical of his country and determined to be an expatriate. He returned to Italy, which provided cheap living. He traveled to Florence, the island of Capri, and the town of Taormina in Sicily. In Sicily, he finished writing The Lost Girl, which he had started during his first trip to Italy. In 1922, Lawrence decided to visit America traveling east to see what was then Ceylon and Australia. In Australia, he wrote most of Kangaroo, and from Australia, he traveled to Taos, New Mexico. From New Mexico, he visited Mexico and returned to Europe. His trip to America resulted in his novels Mornings in Mexico, and The Plumed Serpent, which displayed Lawrence's interest in Native American culture. In 1928, Lawrence completed Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was published in Florence, but pirated copies circulated around England. In 1930, D.H. Lawrence died of tuberculosis in France. In 1960, Penguin Books published an unexpurgated Lady Chatterley's Lover, and was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. Penguin Books won the trial and influenced the abolition of state censorship.

Articles About Lawrence, D. H.

From Sardinia To The Sangre De Cristo Mountains: How Travel Influenced The Writings of D.H. Lawrence	November 27, 2007
Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. If one quotation could sum up a person's life, this opening line from the travelogue Sea and Sardinia may best epitomize one of the most scandalous and autobiographical writers of the 20th century: D.H. Lawrence.



D. H. Lawrence Revisted	February 6, 2007
The lonely desert mesas stretched to a line of mountains etched on the stark blue horizon. At an elevation of 7,000 feet the morning air was crisp and cool, even though it was July in New Mexico. I was alone in front of a little shrine that reminded me of a country chapel. It seemed an appropriate metaphor considering whose ashes were buried there -- author D. H. Lawrence, the "priest of love."