Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)

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English writer. His work expresses his belief in emotion and the sexual impulse as creative and true to human nature. However, his ideal of the complete, passionate life is threatened by the advancement of the modern and technological world. His writing first received attention after the publication of the semi-autobiographical The White Peacock (1911) and Sons and Lovers (1913). Other novels include The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1921), and Lady Chatterley's Lover, printed privately in Italy in 1928. Lawrence tried to forge a new kind of novel, with a structure and content so intense that it would reflect emotion and passion more genuinely than ever before. This often led to conflict with official and unofficial prudery, and his interest in sex as a life force and bond was often censured. The Rainbow was suppressed for obscenity, and Lady Chatterley's Lover could only be published in a censored form in the UK in 1932. Not until 1960, when the obscenity law was successfully challenged, was it published in the original text. Lawrence also wrote short stories (for example, ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’, written in Mexico from 1922–25) and poetry (Collected Poems, 1928).

The son of a Nottinghamshire miner, Lawrence studied at University College, Nottingham. He became a clerk and later a teacher. On going to London in 1908, he wrote under the pseudonym of Lawrence H Davidson. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published on the recommendation of English writer Ford Madox Ford. Lawrence's mother died in 1911, and this marked a crisis in his life. The demands of love made on him by his mother are the theme of his third novel, Sons and Lovers. In 1914 he married Frieda von Richthofen, ex-wife of his university professor, with whom he had run away in 1912. Frieda was the model for Ursula Brangwen in The Rainbow and its sequel, Women in Love. The Prussian Officer, Lawrence's first collection of stories, appeared in 1914, and the beautiful and penetrating series of poems Look! We Have Come Through was published in 1917. In the same year, his wife's German nationality and Lawrence's own disapproval of World War I caused them to be turned out of their home in Cornwall; from then on they were rarely in England. Lawrence's travels resulted in a series of fine travel essays, Twilight in Italy (1916), Sea and Sardinia (1921), and Mornings in Mexico (1927). The novel Women in Love was followed by Aaron's Rod (1922), Kangaroo (1923), and another volume of poetry, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923). Lawrence's sympathy with the traditions of the Aztec civilization encouraged him in an attempt to found an ideal community in Mexico, and in his Mexican novel The Plumed Serpent (1926) he expounds a mystical and yet physically satisfying religion. Apocalypse (1932) is a revealing commentary on the Book of Revelation, and was his last completed work. Lawrence suffered from tuberculosis, from which he eventually died near Nice, France.

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