Reading the 20th Century discussion

One of the greatest and often most controversial authors of the 20th century, D.H. Lawrence was a successful author from a working-class background many years before the 'Angry Young Men' came along.

Here is the Goodreads/Wikipedia blurb about him:

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.

Lawrence grew up in the small mining community of Eastwood in Nottinghamshire - I have visited and the whole town has almost been turned into a shrine to him, with streets of houses kept looking the same as they were in his time, a trail laid out to walk in his footsteps, and a museum with a lot about his life.

His best-known novels include:

Sons and Lovers

The Rainbow

Women in Love (this is the sequel to The Rainbow)

Lady Chatterley's Lover - in another thread, we are currently discussing a book about the trial of Penguin for publishing the unexpurgated version, The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

There are also many other books by him, including novels, novellas, travel writing, poetry and short stories.

Which books by Lawrence have you read, and which are your favourites?

It has been a long time since I read any, but I read Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover when I was younger. The first three were all good - it is hard to pick a favourite at this distance.

Thanks so much for setting this up Judy. I will be dipping my toe into Lawrence Lake sooner rather than later.


Thanks for your thoughts Hugh. That's very helpful.

I look forward to discovering which titles other members of RTTC recommend. And, if there is any less successful work?

I read a lot of his work when I was young, too - one of my English teachers at school was from Eastwood and was a big enthusiast, so he taught Lawrence at every opportunity.

I read all those you mention at that time, Hugh, plus two earlier versions of Lady Chatterley, selected poetry and letters and a biography - I also read The Lost Girl and I think some of the novellas. It all added up to a bit of a Lawrence overdose in the sixth form, but I have reread him occasionally since.

From what I remember, I think there are elements of misogyny in his work although he does also have sympathetic female characters, and his political views are much-debated - looking online, there are also suggestions of him having ideas related to fascism, especially later on in his career.

He died in 1930 aged only 44 - yet another of the authors who died from TB, like his friend Katherine Mansfield.

Sounds as though a good biography of Lawrence would help to put his work into context


Has anyone read a biography that they would recommend?

As well as the novels mentioned above, I've read some of the novellas and Lawrence's poetry - he's a bit of an acquired taste, I'd suggest. I, too, had an English teacher at school who loved Lawrence, Judy!

His short stories and poetry are really worth looking at. Also he was a wonderful artist. Google his art - you will love it.

I remembered Bavarian Gentians as a great poem -I googled it and discovered there are two vesions, one much better than the other IMO.

Here is the version I love:

Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the day-time torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light,
lead me then, lead me the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness.
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and her groom.

Beautiful poem, thanks Judy. I guess there are allusions to the underworld, but maybe also to mining - I think he was from a mining family? Anyway, it's wonderful.

I read The Lost Girl years ago (though apparently never updated it on Goodreads... hm...) when I was trying to exclusively read lesser known works by famous authors. I remember enjoying it, but that's about it, so I guess it's time for a reread.

He's one of the people followed through Constellation of Genius: 1922: Modernism Year One, which is a fabulous book.

I need to read more of him... Off to add him to my neverending wish list with the library. :)

The latest episode of the always splendid Backlisted Podcast is a discussion about The Rainbow and also D.H. Lawrence more generally



Here's more information...

Joining John & Andy for this episode are two returning guests: Rachael Kerr, publisher and editor, former Publicity Director of Jonathan Cape, Marketing Director of Picador and Harvill and now editor at large for Unbound, who joined us for the Charles Sprawson episode; and Catherine Taylor, writer and critic, who contributes regularly to the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Economist, the TLS, the New Statesmen & the Irish Times, and is a judge for the 2019 Republic of Consciouness Prize and commercial director for the brilliant Brixton Review of Books. Catherine last joined us to talk eloquently about Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift. But the book they are here to talk about today is The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence, first published by Methuen in 1915, which with its sequel Women in Love, is widely to be considered to be Lawrence’s crowning achievement as a writer. As you would expect, the debate is vigorous: Lawrence is a writer who continues to divide readers and the four participants cover the ground from qualified enthusiasm to sympathetic scepticism

Books mentioned:

Henry Green - Doting
Sarah Perry - Melmoth
John Higgs - Watling Street
Eric Karpeles - Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to ‘In Search of Lost Time’
Michael Diamond & Adam Horowitz - Beastie Boys Book
Robert Burton - The Anatomy of Melancholy
D.H. Lawrence - The Rainbow; Women in Love; Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Studies in Classic American Literature; The Complete Poems
Geoff Dyer - Out of Sheer Rage
Helen Dunmore - Zennor in Darkness
F.R. Leavis - D.H. Lawrence, Novelist
Raymond Williams - The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence
Kate Millett - Sexual Politics
John Carey - The Intellectuals & the Masses
Philip Larkin - Selected Letters 1940-1985

https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/dh...

For Lawrence fans, I recently read Frieda: the original Lady Chatterley which I thought was interesting and well done - my review is here if anyone is interested: www.goodreads.com/review/show/2593888614

I thought for a moment this was yet another version of the novel, RC - I remember having to study three different book-length versions at school! I'm very interested to see that it's in fact a biography of Frieda Lawrence. Will head over to read your review now!

Oops sorry, I should have been more explicit - it's actually a novel though I think based quite heavily on biographies and original documents: I found it well-done and persuasive though admit I knew little about Frieda's actual life.

Don't worry, RC, I was just jumping to conclusions before reading your review, which makes it very clear that it is a novel.

This reminds me, I enjoyed the novel Zennor In Darkness by Helen Dunmore, which looks at what happened to Lawrence and Frieda in Cornwall during the First World War.

Oh, I loved Zennor, too - I was looking for it recently and have the horrible feeling I gave it away when I ran out of shelf space :(( That was BK (Before Kindle)!

I loved Zennor In Darkness too, but then I love most Helen Dunmore novels.

A quick heads up that we're having another buddy read of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in November 2025


I have revived the existing thread (thanks RC) and added it in to our schedule

I can easily change the month if anyone has a strong preference for sooner or later - and of course you can read the book any time and comment as the discussions are always just waiting to be revived

See you in November 2025 (or whenever)

Here's the discussion....
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

There have been a number of recent new biographies on Lawrence in the last few years - the one I'd like to read which won various prizes is Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence by Frances Wilson.

Does indeed sound like a fab biog RC




Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize

An electrifying, revelatory new biography of D. H. Lawrence, with a focus on his difficult middle years

“Never trust the teller,” wrote D. H. Lawrence, “trust the tale.” Everyone who knew him told stories about Lawrence, and Lawrence told stories about everyone he knew. He also told stories about himself, again and again: a pioneer of autofiction, no writer before Lawrence had made so permeable the border between life and literature. In Burning Man: The Trials of D. H. Lawrence, acclaimed biographer Frances Wilson tells a new story about the author, focusing on his decade of superhuman writing and travel between 1915, when The Rainbow was suppressed following an obscenity trial, and 1925, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

Taking after Lawrence’s own literary model, Dante, and adopting the structure of The Divine Comedy, Burning Man is a distinctly Lawrentian book, one that pursues Lawrence around the globe and reflects his life of wild allegory. Eschewing the confines of traditional biography, it offers a triptych of lesser-known episodes drawn from lesser-known sources, including tales of Lawrence as told by his friends in letters, memoirs, and diaries. Focusing on three turning points in Lawrence’s pilgrimage (his crises in Cornwall, Italy, and New Mexico) and three central adversaries—his wife, Frieda; the writer Maurice Magnus; and his patron, Mabel Dodge Luhan—Wilson uncovers a lesser-known Lawrence, both as a writer and as a man.

Strikingly original, superbly researched, and always revelatory, Burning Man is a marvel of iconoclastic biography. With flair and focus, Wilson unleashes a distinct perspective on one of history’s most beloved and infamous writers.

And it's worth mentioning here that Rachel Cusk's Second Place is loosely based on/in conversation with Lawrence's relationship with his patron, Mabel Dodge Luhan mentioned above.

Nigeyb wrote: "Does indeed sound like a fab biog RC




Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize

An electrifying, revelatory new biography of D. H. Lawrence, with a focus on his difficult middle years

“Never ..."

I've been wanting to read that for a while. I thought I wasn't particularly interested in Lawrence but read Alison MacLeod's novel Tenderness and was fascinated by the episodes taken from his life. I'd also recommend the Geoff Dyer although not so much about Lawrence as it is about Dyer.

I am more and more looking forward to the upcoming D. H. Lawrence read in November. I am very weak on Lawrence, only having read Women in Love with a professor who hated Lawrence thus making the experience miserable and unrewarding. Otherwise I have only read some short stories, some of which were very good. I was considering the most recent Wilson biography but since we are reading a later novel I fear reading that will make me more annoyed that I have not read more Lawrence. What I was thinking was that that might might delve into more Lawrence while we were reading Henry James, for despite all their differences there seems a similarity in their uniqueness in comparison contemporaries and to reader's reticence on reading them today. When I was thinking of authors that would go well with James both Lawrence and Edith Wharton came to mind and I would be interested if anyone would want to either read more Lawrence or some Wharton when we get to James?

I'm a huge Wharton fan and agree that she's a great complement to James. If anyone is interested, I'd definitely join but might skip House of Mirth and Custom of the Country as I've reread them relatively recently.

I'm a bit wary of DH Lawrence simply because I loved him at school and uni but I'm really not sure I can handle his 'quivering loins' style without a smirk and giggle these days.

I'm glad you're looking forward to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Me too


If it goes well we could consider reading more

Preparing for our read of Lady Chatterley I am listening to this three part series from BBC Artworks available on the BBC Sounds app...


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002...



Here's the blurb....

D.H. Lawrence was, according to EM Forster, “the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation” and while he was undoubtedly one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, he was also one of its most controversial.

During his lifetime, his books, including Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Rainbow, were sometimes banned and sometimes burnt… but the incandescence of his writing and its sometimes scandalous subject matter saw him become a beacon of freedom and liberty to his millions of passionate fans. The lifting of the Lady Chatterley ban in 1960 was famously for Philip Larkin a key moment in the dawning of a sexual revolution though the puritanical monogamist Lawrence would have no doubt disliked becoming a poster-boy for free love.

Effectively cancelled following accusations of misogyny levelled by Kate Millett in her 1970 book ‘Sexual Politics’, he is now finally being brought back into the cultural conversation - principally by women. In this new three-part series Michael Symmons Roberts, who came to Lawrence via his poems and the 1969 Ken Russell adaptation of Women in Love, speaks to guests including Joan Bakewell, Robert Lindsay, Alison MacLeod, Lara Feigel, Derek Owusu and Professor Phil Davies in a bid to better understand three key aspects of Lawrence’s life and work - class, nature - and first of all, sex.

Oh that looks good - I'll give it a go.

I have just listened to the first one and found it very interesting and illuminating. Then again, I know next to nothing about him or his work. Perhaps for a more informed listener it might not be quite so worthwhile? Either way, it has some good guests who offer interesting perspectives.

It's the contemporary conversation that interests me especially from people like Feigel and Owusu.

I'd be up for just about any Wharton read. Also any James that I can find as audio.

I listened to the first two episodes on sex and class - perhaps not quite as much substance as I expected with a bit too much BBC travelogue but definitely worth a listen.

I'll probably lurk for Lady Chatterley but if we do decide to read further Lawrence I'd love to reread The Rainbow & Women in Love, Sons and Lovers.

Worth saying that Lawrence had an intense friendship with Katherine Mansfield who we're reading in December, and there have been suggestions that she caught TB from him which killed her at just 34.

They both felt like outsiders in the English literary establishment, she because she was from New Zealand.

And so tragic that Lawrence was in denial about his TB ....a disease that carried the same sort of taboo as Aids did initially , much later in the century . I went to the DH Lawrence museum in Eastwood, which is housed in his birthplace , this summer and can recommend it . It's a small terrace and , although the family moved " up " in the town to bigger houses it's a mining village through and through .

As for his writing I think he is one of those who was unafraid to write about sex and lust , and was determined to try and capture ecstasy , both sexual and spiritual, on the page . When I was younger everyone read him but he was heavily critiqued and fell out of favour . I'm glad to see he is being rehabilitated . I have read many of his short stories and , like Mansfield , he has produced some stunning work . Can recommend Odour of Chrysanthemums and The Horse Dealers Daughter .

Thanks both


The way the critical thinking about him has waxed and waned was interesting. It said as much about the critics and their eras than Lawrence

Nigeyb wrote: "The way the critical thinking about him has waxed and waned was interesting. It said as much about the critics and their eras than Lawrence"

Absolutely right, and more ballast to the argument that purported ideas about 'objectively good' writing and canonicity tend to be blinkered about the way eras and generations respond to and validate art and ideas differently.

I'm glad the BBC episodes tackled issues over Lawrence's authoritarianism, scepticism about democracy and gender essentialism as those are the things I was worried about in rereading him today, especially given my fond teenage memories.

Hester wrote: "I went to the DH Lawrence museum in Eastwood"

His Sons and Lovers drew very much on Eastwood, his parents and growing up in a mining community - I still have vivid memories of that book, like the horrific conditions underground, the miners lining up to collect their wages - but the compensating 'masculinity' they enjoyed.

You're right about that idea of ecstasy and a kind of spirituality of sex and the body - sometimes it works, at others it tips over into purple prose that just makes me giggle!

I think for me Lady Chatterley is the most realized novel as Lawrence has quite a well-defined and not complicated vision he is espousing. But, personally, I prefer the more ambitious, messy The Rainbow and Women in Love.

And yes, his short stories can be excellent.

I’ve now listened to the second episode of Artworks - the one about Class


Very interesting and perfect for someone who knows little about him. It felt quite nuanced to me. He appears to have been a very contradictory character

The episode, along with Hester’s post above, inspires me to visit his childhood home and associated museum

Thanks Hester

Finally I like what they read of his poetry too

I've listened to the final part of the Artworks series. Not as strong as the first two but glad to have listened. It all adds up to a great introduction.