D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence was born in a mining community in Northern England. Lawrence loved the countryside surrounding his home and spent a great deal of time outside as a child. After school, he became a clerk in an office in the town but came down with pneumonia a few months later which forced him to leave his position. During his recovery, Lawrence spent a great deal of time at a nearby farm where he became friends with Jessie Chambers, the inspiration for Miriam in Sons and Lovers. He studied at Nottingham University and then got a job teaching at a university in London. He received recognition for his fiction when Chambers sent some of his work to a literary journal edited by the poet Ford Maddox Ford, and Lawrence then began to pursue writing as a career. He published his first novel, The White Peacock, in 1910 shortly before the death of his mother. Lawrence was deeply affected by his mother’s death and based Sons and Lovers on this experience. In 1912, Lawrence eloped with a married woman, Frieda Weekly, and the pair left Britain to travel Europe. They returned to England in 1913 and became involved with the London literary and intellectual scene. Lawrence took an anti-war stance to the outbreak of WW1 in Europe. This made him a controversial figure and he was accused of obscenity because of sexual content in his novel The Rainbow, which was banned in the UK. His 1920 novel, Women in Love, and his 1928 novel, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, were also banned on obscenity charges. He eventually left England with Frieda in 1917 and moved to the United States. He was forced to return to Italy for the sake of his health in 1925 and died from tuberculosis in 1930.