Sons and Lovers

Commentary by Anthony Burgess, Jessie Chambers, Frieda Lawrence, V.S. Pritchett, Kate Millett, and Alfred Kazin

Of all Lawrence's work, Sons and Lovers tells us most about the emotional 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."

before the age of four, but respiratory illness and a weak constitution forced him to remain home intermittently. Two months before his sixteenth birthday, he went to work as a clerk in a badly ventilated factory

that made medical supplies, and eventually contracted pneumonia. After a long convalescence, he got a job as a student teacher, but privately he resolved to become a poet. He began writing seriously in 1906

and entered University College, Nottingham, to earn his teacher's certificate. Two years later he started teaching elementary school full-time. He published his first poems in the English Review in 1909. When

he contracted pneumonia a second time, he gave up teaching.

His first two novels, The White Peacock and The Trespasser, were published in 1911 and 1912. About three weeks after the publication of The Trespasser, he left England with Frieda Weekley, n