D. H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover is both one of the most beautiful and notorious love stories in modern fiction. The summation of D. H. Lawrence's artistic achievement, it sharply illustrates his belief that tenderness and passion were the only weapons that could save man from self-destruction.

To be oneself was a supreme, gleaming triumph of infinity This is the insight that flashes upon Ursula as she struggles to assert her individuality and to stand separate from her family and her surroundings on the brink of womanhood and the modern world. In The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence challenged the customary limitations of language and convention to carry into the structure of his prose the fascination with boundaries and space that characterize the entire novel. Condemned and suppressed on its first publication for its open treatment of sexuality and its `unpatriotic' spirit, the novel chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. The central figure of ursula becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail. In her introduction to this edition Kate Flint illuminates Lawrence's aims and achievements against the background of the burgeoning century. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This collection of short stories traces D. H. Lawrence's development as a writer. His early tales often draw on personal experiences, as in 'Odour of Chrysanthemums', a work he described as 'full of my childhood's atmosphere', while the horror of the First World War haunts 'England, My England'. Later stories, such as 'Things', powerfully express his evolving ideas about the duality of our lives. With their complex characters, these stories illuminate emotional lives and, above all, illustrate Lawrence's passionate belief about the destructive forces in modern society and their effect on love. With an Introduction by Louise Welsh and Notes by Sue Wilson

With its frank portrayal of human passion and sexual desire, D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow was banned as 'obscene' in Britain shortly after first publication. Set in the rural Midlands, The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. All are seeking individual fulfilment, but it is Ursula, Anne's spirited daughter, who in her search for self-knowedge, becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with Biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail. In his introduction James Wood discusses Lawrence's writing style and the tensions and themes of The Rainbow. This Penguin edition reproduces the Cambridge text, which provides a text as close as possible to Lawrence's original. It also includes suggested further reading, a fragment of 'The Sisters II' from his first draft, and chronologies of Lawrence's life and of The Rainbow's Brangwen family. Edited with an introduction by James Wood. 'A brave and important book, passionate and wildly ambitious'Independent on Sunday

In these impressions of the Italian countryside: "Twilight in Italy", "Sea and Sardina", and "Etruscan Places", the author transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty.

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers (1913) is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

The lull continued. Then suddenly came sharp orders, and a new direction of the guns, and an intense, exciting activity. Yet at the center the soul remained dark and aloof, alone. But even so, it was the soul that heard the new sound: the new, deep "papp!" of a gun that seemed to touch right upon the soul. He kept up the rapid activity at the machine-gun, sweating. But in his soul was the echo of the new, deep sound, deeper than life. And in confirmation came the awful faint whistling of a shell, advancing almost suddenly into a piercing, tearing shriek that would tear through the membrane of life. * This collection of stories includes "England, My England," "Tickets, Please," "The Blind Man," "Monkey Nuts," "Wintry Peacock," "You Touched Me," "Samson and Delilah," "The Primrose Path," "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," and "Fanny and Annie."

D. H. Lawrence expected The Rainbow to have 'a bit of a fight' before it was accepted, but 'The fight will have to be made, that is all'. It was suppressed, just over a month after publication, in November 1915. The American publisher would make thirteen further cuts and 'dribble out' the book quietly. In 1930 the British government would again consider suppressing a new printing of The Rainbow. Professor Mark Kinkead-Weekes gives the composition history and collates the surviving states of the text to assess the damage done to Lawrence's novel, and to provide a text as close to that which the author wrote as is now possible. The final manuscript, revisions in the typescript and the first edition are recorded in full in the textual apparatus so the reader can follow the novel's development and evaluate what outside interference may have done to it. Also included are Explanatory notes to historical references and allusions, and an interior chronology of the book itself.

Volume I of the Letters, edited by James T. Boulton, gives the first 580 letters in the series, covering the period September 1901 to May 1913. This is the time of Lawrence’s youth in Eastwood, his first year out of England - in Italy with Frieda - to the publication of Sons and Lovers. There are letters to his early loves, Jessie Chambers, Louie Burrows and Helen Corke. He writes The White Peacock, The Trespasser, Sons and Lovers, the early stories and poems. He is welcomed into the literary world by editors such as Ford and Garnett; he meets Pound and other writers; he reads widely. His mother dies; he grows away from the younger women; he meets Frieda and elopes with her. Professor Boulton’s discreet annotation conceals an enormous labour of patient detection. There are over thirty photographs of his friends and correspondents and a newly discovered portrait miniature of Lawrence.

This volume contains almost all of the letters D. H. Lawrence wrote in the last fifteen months of his life: 763 letters, the majority previously unpublished. Despite his failing strength, Lawrence was in constant communication with publishers and agents. He continued to write frequently to his sisters and friends. There is no new fiction for Lawrence to discuss, but there are paintings, poems, the major essays Pornography and Obscenity and A Propos of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, articles, and his last work Apocalypse. The most dramatic episodes of these months were the seizure of the Pansies manuscript, and the police raid on an exhibition of Lawrence’s paintings and the subsequent trial. The subject of his illness becomes ominously more prominent, and Lawrence apologises for letters which lack his customary vitality. The volume includes an introduction, maps, illustrations, chronology and index; full notes identify persons and explain Lawrence’s allusions.

This final volume of The Letters of D. H. Lawrence has a threefold purpose. The first is to publish 148 letters to or from Lawrence, and two from Frieda Lawrence, which came to light too late to be entered in their correct chronological positions in earlier volumes. The second is to correct errors in the first seven volumes and offer additional annotation which clarifies some obscurities as well as enhancing our response to the letters. And the third is to provide a comprehensive critical index to the entire edition. The index includes not only specific persons and places but also general topics from Animals and Architecture to War and Youth, via such subjects as Insects, Literary Agents, Religion and Sexuality. The Cambridge Edition of Lawrence’s letters has been described by one reviewer as creating itself ‘a major new literary work’. This volume brings that work to a fitting conclusion.

With a new Introduction by Geoff DyerCommentary by Anthony Burgess, Jessie Chambers, Frieda Lawrence, V. S. Pritchett, Kate Millett, and Alfred KazinOf all Lawrence's work, Sons and Lovers tells us most about the emo-tional source of his ideas," observed Diana Trilling. "The famous Lawrence theme of the struggle for sexual power--and he is sure that all the struggles of civilized life have their root in this primary contest--is the constantly elaborated statement of the fierce battle which tore Lawrence's family." Sons and Lovers is one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century. When it appeared in 1913, it was immediately recognized as the first great modern restatement of the oedipal drama, and it is now widely considered the major work of D. H. Lawrence's early period. This intensely autobiographical novel recounts the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing to manhood in a British working-class family rife with conflict. The author's vivid evocation of the all-consuming nature of possessive love and sexual attraction makes this one of his most powerful novels. For the critic Kate Millett, "Sons and Lovers is a great novel because it has the ring of something written from deeply felt experience. The past remembered, it conveys more of Lawrence's own knowledge of life than anything else he wrote. His other novels appear somehow artificial beside it."