D. H. Lawrence (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Jeffrey Meyers
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1885-1930
- Setting: Chiefly Eastwood, Nottingham, London, and Cornwall, England; Italy; Ceylon; Australia; Taos, New Mexico; Chapala and Oaxaca, Mexico; and Vence, France
- Principal Characters: D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence, Lydia (beardsall) Lawrence, Arthur John Lawrence, Frieda (von Richthofen) Lawrence, Ernest Weekley, Jessie Chambers, Alice Dax, Ford Madox Ford, Edward Garnett, Lady Ottoline Morell, Lady Cynthia Asquith, Bertrand Russell, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, E. M. Forster, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Dorothy Brett, Aldous Huxley
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Class conflict, Literature, Middle classes, Cancer, Death or dying, World War I, Health, Heroes or heroism, Espionage or spies, Tuberculosis, Puritans or Puritanism, Coal or coal mining
- Locales: France, London, England, Italy, Taos, NM, Australia, Nottingham, England, Sri Lanka, Cornwall, England, Chapala, Mexico, Oaxaca, Mexico
Like other biographers, Jeffrey Meyers emphasizes the importance of D. H. Lawrence’s family and class origins. Lawrence’s father Arthur was a semiliterate coal miner who left school at the age of seven to work long days—often sixteen hours—in the fetid “pits,” as the mines were aptly called. Lydia Beardsall, who married Arthur in 1875, has usually been represented by other biographers as essentially middle- class, a schoolteacher whose dearest dream was for her sons to escape the oppressive life of the mines. Lawrence himself contributed to this view in the autobiographical...
[The entire page is 2085 words long]
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