Synopses & Reviews
D.H. Lawrence's great autobiographical novel is a provocative portrait of an artist torn between love for his possessive mother and desire for two young beautiful women. Set in the Nottinghamshire coal fields of Lawrence's own boyhood, the story of young Paul Morel's growing into manhood in a British working-class family rife with conflict reveals both an inner and an outer world seething with intense emotions. Gertrude is Paul's puritanical mother who concentrates all her love and attention on her son Paul. She nurtures his talents as a painter - and when she broods that he might marry someday and desert her, he swears he will never leave her. Inevitably, Paul does fall in love, but with two women - and is unable to choose between them. Written early in Lawrence's literary career, Sons and Lovers possesses all the powers of description, insistent sensuality, and scathing social criticism that are the special hallmarks of his genius. "A work of striking originality," writes the critic F.R. Leavis, by "the greatest creative writer in English of our time."
Review
Praise for D.H. Lawrence “The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.”—E. M. Forster
“He was a language, a setting, a world entirely of his own...He was, like all true poetry, against tepid living and tepid loves…[giving] full expression to the gestures of passion.”—Anaïs Nin
Synopsis
Dark, but filled with bright genius,
Women in Love is a prophetic masterpiece steeped in eroticism, filled with perceptions about sexual power and obsession that have proven to be timeless and true.
Synopsis
D. H. Lawrence’s great autobiographical novel paints a provocative portrait of an artist torn between affection for his mother and desire for two beautiful women. Set in the Nottinghamshire coalfields of Lawrence’s own boyhood, the story follows young Paul Morel’s growth into manhood in a British working-class family.
Gertrude Morel, Paul’s puritanical mother, concentrates all her love and attention on Paul, nurturing his talents as a painter. When she muses that he might marry someday and desert her, the attentive son swears he will never leave her. Then Paul falls in love—with not one woman but two—and must eventually choose between them.…
About the Author
The son of a miner, the prolific novelist, poet, and travel writer David Herbert Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in 1885. He attended Nottingham University and found employment as a schoolteacher. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911, the same year his beloved mother died and he quit teaching after contracting pneumonia. The next year Lawrence published Sons and Lovers and ran off to Germany with Frieda Weekley, his former tutor’s wife. His masterpieces The Rainbow and Women in Love were completed in quick succession, but the first was suppressed as indecent and the second was not published until 1920. Lawrence’s lyrical writings challenged convention, promoting a return to an ideal of nature where sex is seen as a sacrament. In 1928 Lawrence’s final novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was banned in England and the United States for indecency. He died of tuberculosis in 1930 in Venice.