219- ] English Literature

219- ] English Literature

D. H. Lawrence 

Legacy

D.H. Lawrence was first recognized as a working-class novelist showing the reality of English provincial family life and—in the first days of psychoanalysis—as the author-subject of a classic case history of the Oedipus complex. In subsequent works, Lawrence’s frank handling of sexuality cast him as a pioneer of a “liberation” he would not himself have approved. From the beginning, readers have been won over by the poetic vividness of his writing and his efforts to describe subjective states of emotion, sensation, and intuition. This spontaneity and immediacy of feeling coexists with a continual, slightly modified repetition of themes, characters, and symbols that express Lawrence’s own evolving artistic vision and thought. His great novels remain difficult because their realism is underlain by obsessive personal metaphors, by elements of mythology, and above all by his attempt to express in words what is normally wordless because it exists below consciousness. Lawrence tried to go beyond the “old, stable ego” of the characters familiar to readers of more conventional fiction. His characters are continually experiencing transformations driven by unconscious processes rather than by conscious Since the 1960s, Lawrence’s critical reputation has declined, largely as a result of feminist criticism of his representations of women. Although it lacks the inventiveness of his more radical Modernist contemporaries, his work—with its depictions of the preoccupations that led a generation of writers and readers to break away from Victorian social, sexual, and cultural norms—provides crucial insight into the social and cultural history of Anglo-American Modernism.

Lawrence was ultimately a religious writer who did not so much reject Christianity as try to create a new religious and moral basis for modern life by continual resurrections and transformations of the self. These changes are never limited to the social self, nor are they ever fully under the eye of consciousness. Lawrence called for a new openness to what he called the “dark gods” of nature, feeling, instinct, and sexuality; a renewed contact with these forces was, for him, the beginning of wisdom.

Posthumous reputation

The obituaries shortly after Lawrence's death were, with the exception of the one by E. M. Forster, unsympathetic or hostile. However, there were those who articulated a more favourable recognition of the significance of this author's life and works. For example, his long-time friend Catherine Carswell summed up his life in a letter to the periodical Time and Tide published on 16 March 1930. In response to his critics, she wrote:

In the face of formidable initial disadvantages and lifelong delicacy, poverty that lasted for three quarters of his life and hostility that survives his death, he did nothing that he did not really want to do, and all that he most wanted to do he did. He went all over the world, he owned a ranch, he lived in the most beautiful corners of Europe, and met whom he wanted to meet and told them that they were wrong and he was right. He painted and made things, and sang, and rode. He wrote something like three dozen books, of which even the worst page dances with life that could be mistaken for no other man's, while the best are admitted, even by those who hate him, to be unsurpassed. Without vices, with most human virtues, the husband of one wife, scrupulously honest, this estimable citizen yet managed to keep free from the shackles of civilisation and the cant of literary cliques. He would have laughed lightly and cursed venomously in passing at the solemn owls—each one secretly chained by the leg—who now conduct his inquest. To do his work and lead his life in spite of them took some doing, but he did it, and long after they are forgotten, sensitive and innocent people—if any are left—will turn Lawrence's pages and will know from them what sort of a rare man Lawrence was.

Aldous Huxley also defended Lawrence in his introduction to a collection of letters published in 1932. However, the most influential advocate of Lawrence's literary reputation was Cambridge literary critic F. R. Leavis, who asserted that the author had made an important contribution to the tradition of English fiction. Leavis stressed that The Rainbow, Women in Love, and the short stories and tales were major works of art. Later, the obscenity trials over the unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover in America in 1959, and in Britain in 1960, and subsequent publication of the full text, ensured Lawrence's popularity (and notoriety) with a wider public.

Since 2008, an annual D. H. Lawrence Festival has been organised in Eastwood to celebrate Lawrence's life and works; in September 2016, events were held in Cornwall to celebrate the centenary of Lawrence's connection with Zennor.

Selected depictions of Lawrence's life

Priest of Love: a 1981 film based on the non-fiction biography of Lawrence with the same title. It stars Ian McKellen as Lawrence. The film is mostly focused on Lawrence's time in Taos, New Mexico, and Italy, although the source biography covers most of his life.

Coming Through: a 1985 film about Lawrence and Weekley, portrayed by Kenneth Branagh and Helen Mirren respectively.

Zennor in Darkness: a 1993 novel by Helen Dunmore in which Lawrence and his wife feature prominently.

On the Rocks: a 2008 stage play by Amy Rosenthal showing Lawrence, his wife Frieda Lawrence, short-story writer Katherine Mansfield and critic and editor John Middleton Murry in Cornwall in 1916–17.

LAWRENCE – Scandalous! Censored! Banned!: A musical based on the life of Lawrence. Winner of the 2009 Marquee Theatre Award for Best Original Musical. Received its London premiere in October 2013 at the Bridewell Theatre.

Husbands and Sons: A stage play adapted by Ben Power from three of Lawrence's plays, The Daughter-in-Law, A Collier's Friday Night, and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, which were each based on Lawrence's formative years in the mining community of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. Husbands and Sons was co-produced by the National Theater and the Royal Exchange Theater and directed by Marianne Elliott in London in 2015.[67][68]

Frieda: The Original Lady Chatterley (Hodder & Stoughton, 2019): a novel by Annabel Abbs.

Works

Novels

The White Peacock (1911) The Trespasser (1912) Sons and Lovers (1913)The Rainbow (1915)Women in Love (1920)The Lost Girl (1920)Aaron's Rod (1922)Kangaroo (1923)The Boy in the Bush (1924), coauthored with M.L. (Mollie or Molly) SkinnerThe Plumed Serpent (1926)Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)The Escaped Cock (1929), republished as The Man Who Died

Short-story collections

The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914)England, My England and Other Stories (1922)The Complete Short Stories (1922) Three volumes, reissued in 1961 by The Viking Press, Inc.The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird (1923)St Mawr and Other Stories (1925)The Woman who Rode Away and Other Stories (1928)The Rocking-Horse Winner (1926)The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories (1930)Love Among the Haystacks and Other Pieces (1930)The Lovely Lady and Other Tales (1932)The Tales of D.H. Lawrence (1934) – HeinemannCollected Stories (1994) – Everyman's Library

Collected letters

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume I, September 1901 – May 1913, ed. James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-521-22147-1

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume II, June 1913 – October 1916, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1981, ISBN 0-521-23111-6

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume III, October 1916 – June 1921, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-23112-4

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume IV, June 1921 – March 1924 , ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-00695-3

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume V, March 1924 – March 1927, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-00696-1

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume VI, March 1927 – November 1928 , ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-521-00698-8

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume VII, November 1928 – February 1930, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-521-00699-6

The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, with index, Volume VIII, ed. James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-23117-5

The Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Compiled and edited by James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-40115-1

D. H. Lawrence's Letters to Bertrand Russell, edited by Harry T. Moore, New York: Gotham Book Mart, 1948.

Poetry collections

Love Poems and others (1913) Amores (1916) Look! We have come through! (1917)New Poems (1918) Bay: a book of poems (1919) Tortoises (1921) Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) The Collected Poems of D H Lawrence (1928) Pansies (1929) Nettles (1930) The Triumph of the Machine (1930; one of Faber and Faber's Ariel Poems series, illustrated by Althea Willoughby) Last Poems (1932) Fire and other poems (1940) The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence (1964), ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts The White Horse (1964) D.H. Lawrence: Selected Poems (1972), ed. Keith Sagar. Snake and Other Poems

Plays

The Daughter-in-Law (1913) The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (1914)Touch and Go (1920)David (1926)The Fight for Barbara (1933)A Collier's Friday Night (1934)The Married Man (1940)The Merry-Go-Round (1941)The Complete Plays of D.H. Lawrence (1965)The Plays, edited by Hans-Wilhelm Schwarze and John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-24277-0

Non-fiction books and pamphlets

Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays (1914), edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 1985, ISBN 0-521-25252-0, Literary criticism and metaphysics

Movements in European History (1921), edited by Philip Crumpton, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-26201-1, Originally published under the name of Lawrence H. Davison

Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious (1921/1922), edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, 2004 ISBN 0-521-32791-1

Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), edited by Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-55016-5

Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays (1925), edited by Michael Herbert, Cambridge University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-521-26622-X

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929) – Lawrence wrote this pamphlet to explain his novel.

My Skirmish With Jolly Roger (1929), Random House – expanded into A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover

Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation (1931), edited by Mara Kalnins, Cambridge University Press, 1980, ISBN 0-521-22407-1

Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence (1936)

Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and Other Prose Works by D. H. Lawrence (1968)

Introductions and Reviews, edited by N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-83584-4

Late Essays and Articles, edited by James T. Boulton, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-58431-0

Selected Letters, Oneworld Classics, 2008. Edited by James T. Boulton. ISBN 978-1-84749-049-0

The New Adelphi, June–August 1930 issue, edited by John Middleton Murry. Includes, by Lawrence, ″Nottingham and the Mining Countryside,″ Nine Letters (1918–1919) to Katherine Mansfield, and Selected Passages from non-fiction works. Also includes essays on Lawrence by John Middleton Murry, Rebecca West, Max Plowman, Waldo Frank, and others.

Memoir of Maurice Magnus, Keith Cushman, ed. 1 December 1987, Black Sparrow Press. ISBN 978-0-87685-716-8, 0-87685-716-0 This book includes the unexpurgated version of Lawrence's introduction to Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion and related material.

Travel books

Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916), edited by Paul Eggert, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-521-26888-5. Twilight in Italy paperback reissue, I.B. Tauris, 2015, ISBN 978-1-78076-965-3

Sea and Sardinia (1921), edited by Mara Kalnins, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-24275-4

Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays (1927), edited by Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, Cambridge University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-65292-6.

Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays (1932), edited by Simonetta de Filippis, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-25253-9; Etruscan Places, New York: The Viking Press (1932).

Works translated by Lawrence

Lev Isaakovich Shestov All Things are Possible (1920)

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin The Gentleman from San Francisco (1922), tr. with S. S. Koteliansky

Giovanni Verga Mastro-Don Gesualdo (1923)

Giovanni Verga Little Novels of Sicily (1925)

Giovanni Verga Cavalleria Rusticana and other stories (1928)

Antonio Francesco Grazzini (Lasca) The Story of Doctor Manente (1929)

Manuscripts and early drafts of works

Paul Morel (1911–12), edited by Helen Baron, Cambridge University Press, 2003 (first publication), ISBN 0-521-56009-8, an early manuscript version of Sons and Lovers

The First Women in Love (1916–17) edited by John Worthen and Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-521-37326-3

Mr Noon (unfinished novel) Parts I and II, edited by Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25251-2

The Symbolic Meaning: The Uncollected Versions of Studies in Classic American Literature, edited by Armin Arnold, Centaur Press, 1962

Quetzalcoatl (1925), edited by Louis L Martz, W W Norton Edition, 1998, ISBN 0-8112-1385-4, Early draft of The Plumed Serpent

The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, edited by Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-47116-8.

Paintings

The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence, London: Mandrake Press, 1929.

D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, ed. Keith Sagar, London: Chaucer Press, 2003.

The Collected Art Works of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Tetsuji Kohno, Tokyo: Sogensha, 2004.