Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics - D. H. Lawrence [2]
1915 Upon the publication of The Rainbow, Lawrence is prosecuted for his liberal use of profanity and graphic descriptions of sex, and the novel is suppressed. More than 1,000 copies of the book are burned.
1916 Lawrence is introduced to Lady Ottoline Morrell, the wife of a liberal member of Parliament, and she becomes one of his most important patrons. Through her, Lawrence forms friendships with Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forster, and Bertrand Russell.
1917 Lawrence and Frieda are suspected of being spies for the Germans.
1919 The Lawrences journey throughout Europe, stopping in Sicily, Sardinia, and Switzerland. Lawrence publishes Women in Love, the sequel to The Rainbow, in Italy.
1920 He publishes Women in Love in New York.
1921 Women in Love is published in London. Movements in European History, Lawrence’s first major nonfiction work, is published, as is his Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.
1922 Aaron’s Rod, a novel that reflects the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on Lawrence, is published. The Lawrences travel to Ceylon and Australia.
1923 They visit Mexico as well as New York and Los Angeles. Studies in Classic American Literature —in which Lawrence considers Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and others—is published.
1924- 1925 Mabel Dodge Luhan, a New York socialite, gives the Lawrences her Kiowa Ranch in Taos, New Mexico, in return for the original manuscript of Sons and Lovers . Lawrence’s father, Arthur, dies. While visiting Mexico City, Lawrence falls ill with tuberculosis and is forced to return to England.
1925- 1926 The Lawrences settle near Florence. Frieda begins an affair with Angelino Ravagli, a former Italian infantry officer whom she will marry in 1950. Lawrence visits his hometown of Eastwood for the last time. The Plumed Serpent, a political novel about Mexico and its ancient Aztec religion, is published.
1928 Lady Chatterley’s Lover is banned in the United Kingdom and the United States, creating a great demand for the book.
1929 Lawrence’s Expressionist paintings, for which he gains posthumous renown, are declared obscene and confiscated from an exhibition at London’s Warren Gallery.
1930 Lawrence succumbs to tuberculosis on March 2 in Vence, France. Frieda moves to Kiowa Ranch, New Mexico, where she builds a small memorial chapel that houses Lawrence’s ashes.
1960 An unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is published after Penguin Books is acquitted of obscenity charges brought under the Obscene Publications Act. The trial lasts six days; the thirty-five expert witnesses called to testify include E. M. Forster.
Introduction
THE STORY of how and why D. H. Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers is a love story as much as it is a story about literature. The story begins at D. H. Lawrence’s birth and ends just before the outbreak of World War One. Although it is a love story, it is not a story about amor, per se, the exclusive romantic love. Rather, it is about love in all its various guises—love for the Mother Country and the mother, love for the work of writing and, above all, love for life itself D. H. Lawrence was a passionate man; he threw himself into life. In his presence, his peers were aware of life lived more highly, of emotions felt more truly and of the rawness of human experience. Lawrence took life in huge gulps, personalizing it and, in the end, changing it to suit his own artistic goals.
“I remember seeing him sitting apart at a table doing matriculation work,” writes Jessie Chambers in her book D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record (see “For Further Reading”). “He smiled across at me, and I saw again his uniqueness, how totally different he was from any of the other youths.... There was his sensitiveness ... his delicacy of spirit, that, while it contributed vitally to his charm, made him more vulnerable, more susceptible to injury from the crudeness of life” (p. 47).
Sons and