Women in Love

Lawrence’s finest, most mature novel initially met with disgust and incomprehension. In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerald, critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity. Women in Love is, however, a profound response to a whole cultural crisis. The ‘progress’ of the modern industrialised world had led to the carnage of the First World War.

The Rainbow

The Rainbow is about three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire from the 1840s to the early years of the twentieth century. Within this framework Lawrence’s essential concern is with the passional lives of his characters as he explores the pressures that determine their lives, using a religious symbolism in which the ‘rainbow’ of the title is his unifying motif.

Sons and Lovers

This novel is Lawrences semi-autobiographical masterpiece in which he explores emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers.Lawrences novels are perhaps the most powerful exploration in the genre in English of family, class, sexuality and relationships in youth and early adulthood.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is one of the most subversive novels in English Literature. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy, with assistance from Pino Orioli; an unexpurgated edition could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Inky Stephensen’s Mandrake Press in 1929.)