Happy Birthday, D.H. Lawrence, Author of 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover'

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood, England. In the early weeks of his life, Lawrence was afflicted with bronchitis. He was unable to go to school until age seven, and according to the Ranamin Society, much of Lawrence’s unhappiness and awkwardness can be attributed to this late social and educational start. He won a scholarship to high school, but his schoolmates disliked him because he came from a mining family. When he left school and went to work in a factory,, he found his fellow employees a bit too rough around the edges.

No doubt Lawrence’s deeply troubled family life played a part in the angst-ridden personality he became. Not only was Lawrence isolated at school, but his unhappy and possessive mother did her best to turn her children against their drunken and temperamental father, although she also tried to ensure that her children would grow up to have a better life.

To that end, “Bert,” as he was then known, ultimately became a teacher and went to college to get a certificate. Although he was not enthusiastic about college, he was enthusiastic about the challenges of being a teacher. He pursued that career until the weak lungs that had plagued him since birth made him too ill to work. But meanwhile, his writing career had been burgeoning and helped him make a life-changing move to London. Although he eventually moved home and married a professor’s daughter, Frieda Weekley, his literary life had already taken root.

Lawrence is better known as novelist than as a poet, but the Academy of American Poets notes that his poetry was published before his novels or stories.  He was extremely devoted to poetry, and was fond of writing about animals. Some of his more treasured animal poems appear on the site.

His novels, often scathingly autobiographical, have carved a significant space for themselves in the literary canon. For example, “Sons and Lovers” is believed to be based on his childhood experiences and his relationship with his mother. The Poetry Archive offers a full bibliography of all his works, including poems, novels, plays, essays and collections.

Lawrence’s last novel was perhaps his most famous (or infamous) book, the sexually explicit “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” concerns the characters’ attempts to balance intellectual and physical pleasures in life, a theme that also appears in his novels “The Lost Girl” and “Sons and Lovers.” The book was first published in Italy in 1928; heavily censored editions were published in England and the United States in 1932, and later attempts to publish or sell unabridged versions led to arrests and court battles. While most of the controversy surrounding the text occurred long after Lawrence died, it garnered him a great deal of posthumous attention.

Lawrence’s health particularly suffered during the First World War; he and his wife were also suspected of being German sympathizers. As soon as the war ended, they left England, never to return. His later writing focused on the physicality of human and animal life: “By the nineteen-twenties, Lawrence wants his writing to indicate, and his readers to embrace, the animal aloneness that human language only seems to overcome; bodies may come into contact, but not soul.”  He continued to write until his death on March 2, 1930, from tuberculosis.