This article was written by Gina Buonaguro
"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. From the first time he left England in 1912 to his untimely death in France in 1930, Lawrence was almost always on the move, most often crisscrossing Europe and, for a period, wandering the globe. As his career progressed, his travels almost always inspired his literature, and he exhibited an amazing ability to write prolifically and concentrate just about anywhere. Unlike other writers, who may leave their home country only to write about it, Lawrence for most of his life wrote to travel and his travels were his motivation for writing.
Born in 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, Lawrence had a modest upbringing plagued by delicate health, which eventually blossomed into the full-blown tuberculosis that ultimately killed him. After a stint as a schoolmaster, five of his poems and his first novel, The White Peacock, were published.
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Lawrence's career really took off when he left England for the first time in 1912, to elope to Germany with Frieda Weekley ne von Richthofen, the wife of his former University of Nottingham professor. His sojourn to Italy from Germany inspired the travelogue Twilight in Italy (published in 1916), and it was during this period that he completed work on his first major novel. Sons and Lovers, which delved into the Oedipal relationship between mother and son and really put Lawrence on the literary map, was published in 1913 in England to positive reviews.
But as he both entered fully into a conjugal relationship with his free–thinking and often unfaithful wife (he and Frieda married in 1914 after her divorce was finalized) and explored new literary territory back home, Lawrence began to realize that Victorian England was not the best place to pursue his career. The Rainbow, a kind of prequel to Women in Love, was published in 1915 and banned on obscenity charges. The book's reputation basically eliminated Lawrence's ability to earn money by writing.
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