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Selected Stories

This collection of short stories traces D. H. Lawrence's development as a writer. His early tales often draw on personal experiences, as in 'Odour of Chrysanthemums', a work he described as 'full of my childhood's atmosphere', while the horror of the First World War haunts 'England, My England'. Later stories, such as 'Things', powerfully express his evolving ideas about the duality of our lives. With their complex characters, these stories illuminate emotional lives and, above all, illustrate Lawrence's passionate belief about the destructive forces in modern society and their effect on love. 
 
With an Introduction by Louise Welsh and Notes by Sue Wilson

D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence (1885-1930) English novelist, story writer, critic, poet and painter, one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature. 
 
 
Sue Wilson taught on the postgraduate programme on D.H. Lawrence for several years at the University of Nottingham, where she was a Lecturer in Modern English Literature. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Drama at Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge. 
Louise Welsh has published many short stories and articles. Her first novel - The Cutting Room - was a prize winning and hugely acclaimed best seller. She lives in Glasgow and is currently working on her next novel.

Lawrence was one of the great short story writers of the 20th century. This new collection of ten stories shows the variety of Lawrence's achievement. the works develop from early realism towards myth and fairy tale, murder and ghost stories.

D. H. Lawrence and Italy

In these impressions of the Italian countryside, Lawrence transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty. 
 
Twilight in Italy is a vibrant account of Lawrence's stay among the people of Lake Garda, whose decaying lemon gardens bear witness to the twilight of a way of life centuries old. In Sea and Sardina, Lawrence brings to life the vigorous spontaneity of a society as yet untouched by the deadening effect of industrialization. And Etruscan Places is a beautiful and delicate work of literary art, the record of "a dying man drinking from the founts of a civilization dedicated to life."

In these impressions of the Italian countryside, Lawrence transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty. Twilight in Italy is a vibrant account of Lawrence's stay among the people of Lake Garda, whose decaying lemon gardens bear witness to the twilight of a way of life centuries old. In Sea and Sardina, Lawrence brings to life the vigorous spontaneity of a society as yet untouched by the deadening effect of industrialization. And Etruscan Places is a beautiful and delicate work of literary art, the record of "a dying man drinking from the founts of a civilization dedicated to life."

Women in Love

Widely regarded as D. H. Lawrence's greatest novel, Women in Love is both a lucid account of English society before the First World War, and a brilliant evocation of the inexorable power of human desire. 
 
Women in Love continues where The Rainbow left off, with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships, Ursula's with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, and Gudrun's with industrialist Gerald Crich, and later with a sculptor, Loerke. Quintessentially modernist, Women is Love is one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative and unsettling works. 
 
In his introduction Amit Chaudhuri discusses Lawrence's style and imagery. This introduction also includes a chronology of Lawrence's life and work, further reading, notes and appendices containing the original foreword to Women in Love, a fragment of 'The Sisters', 'Prologue' and 'Wedding' chapters from an earlier draft, a map and discussion of the setting and people involved. 
 
With an introduction by Amit Chaudhuri. 
 
'His genius was for instant perception and vivid, passionate expression' 
The Times 
 
'His masterpiece ... Lawrence compels us to admit that we live less finely than we should' 
New York Review of Books

Women in Love is widely regarded as D. H. Lawrence's greatest novel. The novel continues where The Rainbow left off with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships, Ursula's with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, though he gives that up, and Gudrun's with Gerald Crich, an industrialist, and later with a sculptor, Loerke.

Sons and Lovers

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist, storywriter, critic, poet and painter, one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature. Among his works, Sons and Lovers appeared in 1913, The Rainbow (1915), Women In Love (1920), and many others. 
 
 
Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1950. His non-fiction books include And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), As If (1997), and Too True (1998), Things My Mother Never Told Me (2002), a collection of essays (and stories). Blake Morrison's first novel, The Justification of Johann Gutenberg, a fictional portrait of the 15th-century printer and the inventor of movable type, was published in 2000.

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers (1913) is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

The Rainbow

With its frank portrayal of human passion and sexual desire, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow was banned as 'obscene' in Britain shortly after first publication. 
 
Set in the rural Midlands, The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. All are seeking individual fulfilment, but it is Ursula, Anne's spirited daughter, who in her search for self-knowedge, becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with Biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail. 
 
In his introduction James Wood discusses Lawrence's writing style and the tensions and themes of The Rainbow. This Penguin edition reproduces the Cambridge text, which provides a text as close as possible to Lawrence's original. It also includes suggested further reading, a fragment of 'The Sisters II' from his first draft, and chronologies of Lawrence's life and of The Rainbow's Brangwen family. 
 
Edited with an introduction by James Wood. 
 
'A brave and important book, passionate and wildly ambitious' 
Independent on Sunday

The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. The central figure of ursula becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail.

Selected Poems

From early, rhyming works in Love Poems and Others (1913) to the ground-breaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) the poems of D. H. Lawrence challenged convention and inspired later poets. 
 
This volume includes extensive selections from these and other editions, and contains some his most famous poems, such as 'Piano', a nostalgic reflection on lost youth and love for his mother; 'Snake', exploring human fear of the natural world; the short, cutting comment on sexual politics of 'Can't Be Borne'; and the quiet philosophical resignation of 'Basta!'. Using the revised poems, but in the order in which they appeared in their original collections, this selection offers a fresh perspective that reveals an innovative poet who gave voice to his most intense emotions.

From early, rhyming works in Love Poems and Others (1913) to the ground-breaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) the poems of D. H. Lawrence challenged convention and inspired later poets. This volume includes extensive selections from these and other editions, and contains some his most famous poems, such as 'Piano', a nostalgic reflection on lost youth and love for his mother; 'Snake', exploring human fear of the natural world; the short, cutting comment on sexual politics of 'Can't Be Borne'; and the quiet philosophical resignation of 'Basta!'. Using the revised poems, but in the order in which they appeared in their original collections, this selection offers a fresh perspective that reveals an innovative poet who gave voice to his most intense emotions.

D. H. Lawrence

This small group of stories by D. H. Lawrence show him in a number of moods. The hope is that in such a limited number of pages, the reader will come away with a compressed, rich sense of Lawrence’s wonderful prose style, precision of language and expansive vision of the human struggle and how it can be transcended. Is ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ perhaps the greatest of all English short stories?

Books by D. H. Lawrence

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Books they tried to ban

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