Birth
David Herbert Richards Lawrence drew his first breath on September 11 1885, in a small house in Victoria Street, Eastwood, near Nottingham. The fourth child of a coal miner, Arthur Lawrence and Lydia (nee Beardsall), it is not recorded if that first breath was taken easily, but within two weeks the child had bronchitis. It was to be a warning: 'Bert' Lawrence's lungs would plague him all his life.

School
After a false start at school at only four years of age, he was withdrawn and didn't return to the Beauvale Board School until he was seven years of age. This late start, no doubt, disadvantaged him socially, setting him apart from the other children. Indeed, he had few friends of his own, preferring the company of his younger sister, Ada, and her friends. He was a good scholar, however, and became the first boy from the school to win a scholarship to Nottingham High School.
It caused the family considerable hardship to allow the boy to take up this scholarship but in September 1898, three days after his thirteenth birthday Lawrence went to the High School.
He worked hard and made the best of this opportunity, but it was a strain, certainly on the family finances, and also on a delicate boy. He took the train to Nottingham at seven in the morning and didn't reach home until evening. Once again, he made few friends; Frieda, his wife, wrote that one boy who took Lawrence home to tea was horrified to discover that his father was a miner and refused to have any more to do with him.
Lawrence spent much of what today would be thought of as 'leisure time' (and there was precious little of it) helping his overworked, and beloved mother. His early life is open to scrutiny in his third and autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers.

Work

At fifteen, with High School and the 19th Century over, Lawrence began work at Haywoods, a surgical appliance manufacturer in Nottingham. He seems to have had similar difficulties in making friends here too; finding the factory girls frighteningly uncouth for his rather refined ways. Now away from home for fourteen hours per day, excepting Sunday and one half day per week, working in dark and airless conditions, the frail health of the youth broke; within six months Lawrence had pneumonia. Due to his mother's devoted nursing, and against expectations, he recovered.
Back to School

Lawrence's health, however, had been irreparably weakened and it was not considered wise that he should return to the Nottingham factory. Accordingly, he joined the local British School as a pupil-teacher.
Pupil teachers were expected to help with classes after having arrived at school an hour earlier than the pupils in order to take lessons from the headmaster. Later he also attended the Pupil-teacher Centre at Ilkeston where, for possibly the first time in his life, he made many friends

Beginning to write
 
He also began to write. This writing was done in secret, under the guise of 'lessons', at home. The only person to see this very early work was Jessie Chambers, a fellow pupil-teacher and close friend who lived at Haggs Farm. This farm and family provided a second home for the adolescent Lawrence, away from the strains of his own family. Here, he helped with the hay-making, discussed books and organised charades - Jessie's younger brother, David, has said "... he was at his greatest in charades. There have never been such charades since."1
Lawrence's first published work did not get his name into print. It was a story especially written for a competition run by the Nottingham Guardian in 1907. It was called A Prelude and won a £3 prize (this was a sizable prize given that when Lawrence began teaching a year later he earned £1.90 per week). Lawrence had entered all three categories. Once in his own name, the others in friends' names; the winning entry was in Jessie Chambers' name.

University

In December 1904 Lawrence sat the examination for the King's Scholarship, which would guarantee him a day place at Nottingham University College, where he could obtain his Teacher's Certificate. He passed - he was in the top 37 of over 2,000 candidates, but was unable to take up the position until September 1906 due to financial hardship.
Lawrence was to be bitterly disappointed by college. He felt that he gained nothing from the experience; the biggest disappointment being the lecturers themselves. He had imagined men full of enthusiasm and inspiration but instead remarked that he "might as well be taught by gramophones as by those men."2

Teaching

In 1908 Lawrence became a qualified teacher and took up a post at Davidson Road School, Croydon. It is not difficult to imagine the wrench with which he left Eastwood, his beloved mother and Haggs Farm. The school had some very poor boys and it was not to be an easy introduction for the young schoolmaster. However, he was dedicated and innovative - he encouraged the boys to act out The Tempest rather than sitting at their desks reading it - and the headmaster was pleased with his work.

First Novel

In his free time Lawrence wrote. In January 1911 his first novel, The White Peacock was published, but the elation he may have felt from this success was obliterated by the overshadowing death of his mother, from cancer, in the previous month.
End of a teacher's career

In November of 1911 the poor health that had plagued Lawrence all year culminated in pneumonia. Once again, he fought his way free of the illness but his lungs had been damaged further. The doctor told him outright that to return to teaching would be to court tuberculosis and so, again, his life's direction was dictated by his lungs.

The beginning of a new life

A German uncle suggested a plan whereby Lawrence could possibly become a Lektor in a German university. A professor of modern languages at Nottingham University, Ernest Weekley, was consulted and invited the twenty six year old Lawrence to lunch to discuss the details. Lawrence accepted the invitation and within two months was in Germany - not, however, as a Lektor but as the lover of Frieda Weekley, the thirty two year old mother of Weekley's three children.

His last days

Towards the end of his wandering life, he had been staying at Bandol since October 1929 when Dr Andrew Morland, the English lung specialist, examined him and persuaded him that his long-neglected tuberculosis required urgent care. On his advice Lawrence moved on 6 February to the sanatorium called AD ASTRA at Vence, where he was examined and attended by Doctor Madinier. As the news spread that his life was in danger; H.G. WELLS, and the AGA KHAN, called on him, and the American sculptor Jo DAVIDSON made a model of his bust. He did not take kindly to life in the clinic, and left it on March 1st for the Villa ROBERMOND, where he died the next day, in the care of his wife Frieda von RICHTHOFEN, of the English writer Aldous HUXLEY and his Belgian wife Maria NYS.

Burial and exhumation

LAWRENCE was buried in the old Vence cemetery on a March 1930. His remains were exhumed in March 1935 in the presence of Mrs Gordon CROTCH, an English resident, and incinerated at Marseille on March 13. A wooden box holding a sealed zinc container in which were his ashes, was then delivered, together with the appropriate transatlantic transport authorisation by the Prefecture, dated 14 March, to the former captain of Bersaglieri Angelo RAVAGLI, at that time the factotum and lover of Lawrence's widow. His mission was to take the ashes to Taos (New Mexico) in "a beautiful vase" specially ordered by Frieda for this purpose. The ashes brought to Taos by RAVAGLI in grotesque circumstances were cast by him into the concrete slab of a "shrine" which he built at the KIOWA ranch at San Cristobal near Taos.