The Collected Short Stories

by D.H. Lawrence

It could be said that only in these short works, with their dramatic clarity and immediacy, did Lawrence fully realize his entirely original vision of the erotic and of the power of the irrational in human affairs.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, Literature, British Literature

791 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

DH is Out today, but then he was never In. A Puritan
who preached hedonism - found within his imagination -
he's a tantilizing enigma. He delves into issues that
others avoid like domination-submission, erotica-homoerotica,
the repressed nature of men-women. "Since both sexes have
been equally educated out of their animal nature," avers
Diana Trilling, "neither sex is spared his anger."

His stories explore the aches and pains of the heart,
and other organs. Set amid the raw beauty of the American
southwest, "The Princess," eg, is about the plucking of
"a dignified scentless flower," pushing 40, who insists
that a studly guide in New Mexico take her on a pack trip
high into the mountains. Hours from civilization, she ponders:
"Quoi faire? What was she to do? She seemed faced with absolute Nothingness." It quickly becomes Somethingness.

DH suckles Blavatsky, strokes Jung, nuzzles Nietzsche. And
there's always the sun, "a great heart whose tremors run
through our smallest veins."

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a freshman I had to read this, most of it at least. It was the first class I had to take in Literature. It involved allot of papers typed on a blue typewriter about themes, plots, characters and the symbolism. That was a huge challenge and an interesting series of class discussions about the stories and relevance of the books' comments about life's classic struggles and dramas. DH Lawrence's writing, his intensity and descriptions are classic quality. Perhaps it is fair to say his offerings help open up the personal human sharing of internal struggles between self and others.

[Vincent Nunchuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every short story pulls heartstrings and detunes them from such heavy play. DH Lawrence is to imagery as Orwell is to the point, and this collection is very similar to Dubliners by James Joyce in the abrupt endings, often lack of resolution and stark character positions.

Lawrence's skill stands out in the painful dramatic irony produced by his characters repetitive hamartia regarding expression. We as the audience learn to feel exactly like each character, and consequently wrestle with just how easy their conflicts could be resolved if only they set aside pride or were emotionally honest.

[Richard Lodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence's intensity, seriousness, fierce brilliance is not to be under-estimated, even if his misanthropy manifests itself brutally at times. He is driving towards something all the time. Sometimes his stories can feel suffocating, because that was really his view of life - he felt trapped, smothered, overwhelmed. He made mistakes in his surge to judgement, but there are things here that are worth learning from. He wrote literature that mattered.

[alex]

"A Modern Lover"
rating: tbd/5

"The Old Adam"
rating: tbd/5

"Her Turn"
rating: tbd/5

"Strike-Pay"
rating: tbd/5

"The Witch à la Mode"
rating: tbd/5

"New Eve and Old Adam"
rating: tbd/5

"A Prelude"
rating: tbd/5

"Love Among the Haystacks"
rating: tbd/5

"A Chapel and A Hay Hut Among the Mountains"
rating: tbd/5

"Once"
rating: tbd/5

"A Fly in the Ointment"
rating: tbd/5

"Lessford's Rabbits"
rating: tbd/5

"A Lesson on a Tortoise"
rating: tbd/5

"The Prussian Officer"
rating: tbd/5

"The Thorn in the Flesh"
rating: tbd/5

"Daughters of the Vicar"
rating: tbd/5

"A Fragment of Stained Glass"
rating: tbd/5

"The Shades of Spring"
rating: tbd/5

"Second Best"
rating: tbd/5

"The Shadow in the Rose Garden"
rating: tbd/5

"Goose Fair"
rating: tbd/5

"The White Stocking"
rating: tbd/5

"A Sick Collier"
rating: tbd/5

"The Christening"
rating: tbd/5

"Odour of Chrysanthemums"
rating: tbd/5

"England, My England"
rating: tbd/5

"Tickets, Please"
rating: tbd/5

"The Blind Man"
rating: tbd/5

"Monkey Nuts"
rating: tbd/5

"Wintry Peacock"
rating: tbd/5

"You Touched Me"
rating: tbd/5

"Samson and Delilah"
rating: tbd/5

"The Thimble"
rating: tbd/5

"The Mortal Coil"
rating: tbd/5

"The Primrose Path"
rating: tbd/5

"The Horse Dealer's Daughter"
rating: tbd/5

"Delilah and Mr Bircumshaw"
rating: tbd/5

"Fanny and Annie"
rating: tbd/5

"The Ladybird"
rating: tbd/5

"The Fox"
rating: tbd/5

"The Captain's Doll"
rating: tbd/5

"St Mawr"
rating: tbd/5

"The Princess"
rating: tbd/5

"Two Blue Birds"
rating: tbd/5

"Sun"
rating: tbd/5

"The Woman Who Rode Away"
rating: tbd/5

"Smile"
rating: tbd/5

"The Border Line"
rating: tbd/5

"Jimmy and the Desperate Woman"
rating: tbd/5

"The Last Laugh"
rating: tbd/5

"In Love"
rating: tbd/5

"Glad Ghosts"
rating: tbd/5

"None of That"
rating: tbd/5

"The Man Who Loved Islands"
rating: tbd/5

"The Lovely Lady"
rating: tbd/5

"Rawdon's Roof"
rating: tbd/5

"The Rocking-Horse Winner"
rating: tbd/5

"Mother and Daughter"
rating: tbd/5

"The Blue Moccasins"
rating: tbd/5

"Things"
rating: tbd/5

"The Virgin and the Gipsy"
rating: tbd/5

"The Man Who Died"
rating: tbd/5

[Dale Boyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lawrence is undeniably a great writer, but even his much-lauded masterpieces left me a bit lukewarm. The one story that absolutely flabbergasted me, and which is an unquestionable masterpiece, is The Woman Who Rode Away. It's very unlike most of his other work, but I absolutely loved it.

[David Curl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some really good short stories.

Lawrence had a good understanding of human emotions and our ability for self deception. I liked the last story best.

[Alec]

["Glad Ghosts"] DHL is so disruptive he seems more modern than the bracketing Fitzgerald and James with their elaborate modernisms; he is ahead of his time, his own time, even as the rest of it went in its own direction, always wrong, perhaps mercifully so.

#4
Wednesday is still wash-day with some women. As the men clustered round the Chapel, they heard the thud-thud-thud of many pouches, women pounding away at the wash-tub with a wooden pestle. In the Square the white clothes were waving in the wind from a maze of clothes-lines, and here and there women were pegging out, calling to the miners, or to the children who dodged under the flapping sheets.

#19
Ah, how he had wanted her: Winifred! She was young and beautiful and strong with life, like a flame in sunshine. She moved with a slow grace of energy like a blossoming, red-flowered bush in motion. She, too, seemed to come out of the old England, ruddy, strong, with a certain crude, passionate quiescence and a hawthorn robustness. And he, he was tall and slim and agile, like an English archer with his long supple legs and fine movements. Her hair was nut-brown and all in energic curls and tendrils. Her eyes were nut-brown, too, like a robin's for brightness. And he was white-skinned with fine, silky hair that had darkened from fair, and a slightly arched nose of an old country family. They were a beautiful couple.

#33
They went along a handsome but cold corridor, and tapped at a door. Matthew, walking in far-off Hades, still was aware of the soft, fine voluminousness of the women's black skirts, moving with soft, fluttered haste in front of him.

#38
[...] I found myself with the strong, passive shoulder of Mrs. Hale under my hand, and her inert hand in mine, as I looked down at her dusky, dirty-looking neck — she wisely avoided powder. The duskiness of her mesmerised body made me see the faint dark sheen of her thighs, with intermittent black hairs. It was as if they shone through the silk of her mauve dress, like the limbs of a half-wild animal that is locked up in its own helpless dumb winter, a prisoner.
She knew, with the heavy intuition of her sort, that I glimpsed her crude among the bushes, and felt her attraction.

[Teddy Afeni]

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