D. H. Lawrence Bibliography

Novels
Short Stories
Plays
Critical Studies/Essays
Travel Writing
Letters
Poems
Translations
Paintings

 

    Words that shimmer and can be of urgent appeal... oh, how about D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), at his best? He believed he had an inner daimon, or what Friedrich Nietzsche may have called a highly developed Dionysian impulse. Waterfalls of passion, intensely felt....

    Perhaps the pluralistic universe of William James had an influence on his writing. At his best, Lawrence can open as many questions as he apparently answers. Or maybe "pluralism" explains why he can juggle both pagan and Christian elements so well.

    D.H. Lawrence... A man with a mission... A prophet of love... A very funny, self-effacing fellow.... writing and re-writing, often in intense flashes... Considering that he was only 44 when he died, and the amount of energy he had to spend simply staying alive in a struggle against what turned out to be tuberculosis, it is an amazing achievement indeed.
 
 

Novels

    "The White Peacock" (1911) is Lawrence's first novel, an under-rated achievement, in my opinion. "Sons and Lovers" (1913) is generally regarded as his first masterpiece.

    "The Rainbow" (1915) and "Women In Love" (written in 1916-17, released in 1920) were originally designed as one effort, separated by a few major cataclysms like the banning of "The Rainbow" and the First World War. Lawrence was writing ahead of his time, and at times he went further than he was willing to let his audience see. He omitted the planned "Prologue" chapter to "Women In Love" from the final edition, for example; it is now available in the Penguin 1995 edition as part of "Appendix III", and adds some intriguing insights to Birkin, Gerald, and Hermione as they were originally conceived. The First 'Women In Love' is a version with the "Prologue" already discarded, as it was circulated unsuccessfully for possible publishers in the winter of 1916, and has a quite different last scene than the final effort. Although only available in hardback at the moment, I recommend it highly.

    The "Leadership Series" is an odd collection. They include "Aaron's Rod" (1921), "Kangaroo" (1923), and "The Plumed Serpent" (1925), an earlier draft of which Lawrence called "Quetzacoatl" (1923).

    Some question the grouping of the above novels as his "leadership" phase, since he probed the question both earlier in his life and later. Regardless, please note that neither version of "The Plumed Serpent" is available in the corrected "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" edition at the time of this writing. However, the posthumously published "Mr. Noon" (1920/1984) is, and has more to do with love than leadership. And "The Boy In The Bush" (1924) is a novel that Lawrence adapted by a story originally started by Mollie Skinner about a young man who arrives in Australia in the late 19th century to make a new life most specifically for himself.

    When possible, I refer you to "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" editions of his works. "Sons and Lovers" for example, was significantly cut back by Lawrence's editor, Edward Garnett, for publication. Other problems with originally published editions range from typing errors, the need to conform to a publisher's "house style," to intentional and unintentional replacements or omissions of words and entire paragraphs. However, Garnett's original version of "Sons and Lovers" may be compared with the "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" edition to see what he cut, why, and brings up the question of editorial interference which have plagued writers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald for different reasons while composing "Tender Is The Night" (1933). In Lawrence's case, Garnett deserves credit, in my opinion, for actually getting a version of the book published and accessible in 1913.

    "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1928) is his most famous novel, perhaps for the four-letter words, or for the length of time that it was banned... until 1959 in the United States, 1960 in Great Britain. There are two earlier versions available for comparison, the second being "John Thomas and Lady Jane"  (1927). Note: This version of "John Thomas and Lady Jane" is not a "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" edition. To me, his work from this period is better represented in short story, poetry, painting, and essay forms.
 
 

Short Stories and Novels

    Lawrence's short stories offer brilliant flashes. He can pack so much into such little space, and without some of the repetitive style that marks his longer works. "The Complete Short Stories" are offered by Penguin in Volumes One, Two, and Three. However, there are newer versions in Penguin paperback form of the corrected "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" versions, such as "Love Among the Haystacks" and Other Stories, "England, My England" and Other Stories, "The Prussian Officer" and Other Stories, and "The Woman Who Rode Away" and Other Stories.

    Michael Lockwood chose the following ten "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" versions in his Selected Short Stories: "The White Stocking," "Odour of Chrysanthemums," "Daughters of the Vicar," "The Prussian Officer," "Tickets Please," "The Blind Man", "Hadrian [You Touched Me]," "The Rocking-Horse Winner," "The Man Who Loved Islands," and "The Lovely Lady."

    Novellas such as "The Fox" (1918-20) and "St. Mawr" (1925) both achieve a dream-like, hypnotic feel. What one gets out of the dream depends on one's own perspective at the time as well as Lawrence's, I suppose. "The Man Who Died" (1928) is based, some believe, as much on Hilda Doolittle and Lawrence as it is on Jesus/Osiris and Isis. Many love "The Virgin and the Gipsy" (1930).
 

Poetry

    Some of Lawrence's poetry is among the best in the English language. The 1000+ page edition of "Complete Poems", available from Penguin is indispensable, really. (It is not, however, a "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" edition.) Just turn to any page, and you're never too far away from a gem. These are some of the most important:

     "The Wild Common"
     "Bei Hennef"
     "We Are Transmitters"
     "Name The Gods"
     "There Are No Gods"
     "Whales Weep Not!"
 
 

Essays and Non-Fiction

    D.H. Lawrence and Italy contains un-corrected "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" forms of "Twilight In Italy" (1916), "Sea and Sardinia" (1921), and "Etruscan Places" (1932).

    The corrected "Mornings in Mexico" has not yet been released by Cambridge University Press, after which a "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" Penguin version should be available.

    "Studies In Classic American Literature" (1923) reveal as much about Lawrence as the American authors he discusses. I particularly enjoy the "Benjamin Franklin" essay. Some people credit Lawrence as part of the 1920's revival that finally gave Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" the attention it deserves. Note: This is not a "Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" edition.

    "Fantasia of the Unconscious" (1923) and "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious" (1922) have their moments. Note: This is not a"Cambridge D.H. Lawrence" edition.

    Apocalypse is a sporadically brilliant, late treatise, using the "Book of Revelation in the Bible" as its jumping-off point.

    The Letters of D.H. Lawrence are actually seven volumes in length. James T. Boulton edited The Selected Letters of D.H. Lawrence.

    "Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine" and Other Essays, including "The Crown," is available in paperback.

    "Study of Thomas Hardy" and Other Essays includes one of my favorite essays, "The Future of the Novel," formerly known as "Surgery for the Novel: Or A Bomb" in Phoenix, "The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence".
 

Influences

    Figuring out who influenced Lawrence can be difficult, particularly since he often lambasted those whom he loved most. However, Lawrence gives a clue with Cyril, his protagonist, in part III of his early short story, "A Modern Lover" (1910):

    "How infinitely far away, now, seemed Jane Eyre and George Eliot. These had marked the beginning. He smiled as he traced the graph onwards, plotting the points with Carlyle and Ruskin, Schopenhauer and Darwin and Huxley, Omar Khayyam, the Russians, Ibsen and Balzac; then Guy de Maupassant and Madame Bovary. They had parted in the midst of Madame Bovary. Since then had come only Nietzsche and William James."

    He wrote a "Study of Thomas Hardy" at the time of the composition of The Rainbow.

    The authors in "Studies In Classic American Literature" (1923) were often given different criticism in earlier versions of the essays or in letters to friends than in the final release: Benjamin Franklin, Hector St John de Crevecoeur, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter  and Blithedale Romance, Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, Herman Melville's Typee, Omoo, and Moby Dick, as well as Walt Whitman.

    Earlier texts such as "The Bible", Greek mythology such as Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, his own English Shakespeare, Norse, Aztec, Egyptian mythology, and earlier English Romantic writers such as Blake and Coleridge cannot be under-estimated. Lawrence may have suffered from an anxiety of influence with Plato, too.
 
 

Acquaintances, Friends, and Admirers

    Acquaintances included Ford Madox Ford, perhaps the most significant early promoter of Lawrence's work, Ezra Pound, and Bertrand Russell.

    Personal friends included E.M Forster (at times), Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry (at other times), Ottoline Morrell, Hilda Doolittle, and Aldous Huxley.

    Admirers of Lawrence include Tennessee Williams, who wrote a dramatic version of "You Touched Me [Hadrian]," Stephen Spender, Kenneth Rexroth, Anais Nin, Gary Snyder, Anthony Burgess, and William Carlos Williams, who wrote a poem called "An Elegy for D.H. Lawrence."
 
 

Studying Lawrence

    Cambridge University's encyclopedic three-volume biography includes "D.H. Lawrence, The Early Years, 1885-1912" by John Worthen (1991); "D.H. Lawrence, Triumph to Exile, 1912-1922" by Mark Kinkead-Weekes (1996); and "D.H. Lawrence, Dying Game, 1922-1930" by David Ellis (1998).

    Brenda Maddox's "D.H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage" (1994) is a good read. For a point of view on the earlier life of Lawrence, Philip Callow's "Son and Lover: The Young D.H. Lawrence" (1991) is still in print.

    Many who knew Lawrence wrote remembrances of him. These include "Son of Woman" (1931) and "Reminiscences of D.H. Lawrence" (1933) by John Middleton Murry, Catherine Carswell's "Savage Pilgrimage" (1932), "Portrait, of a Genius, But..." (1950) by Richard Aldington, "D.H. Lawrence, A Personal Record" by Jessie Chambers, and the posthumously released "D.H. Lawrence, A Memoir by his old friend", G.H. Neville (1981).

    Frieda Lawrence, his wife, wrote a remembrance, "Not I, But The Wind" (1934) has also been the subject of many biographies herself.

    Anais Nin and Henry Miller each wrote a book of appreciation for Lawrence. Anthony Burgess wrote "Flame into Being" (1985) in honor of Lawrence's birth centennial. There are many interpretations of Lawrence's work (often inter-woven with his life) available. Among them are:

     * "The Vital Art of D.H. Lawrence: Vision and Expression" by Jack Stewart (1999) explores relationships to other artists, in both verbal and non-verbal forms to which Lawrence gave his own voice, including Aubrey Beardsley, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch; movements such as impressionism, expressionism, and futurism. Stewart invokes Maurice Merleau-Ponty well.

     * "D.H. Lawrence on Screen" by Jane Jaffe Young (1999) talks about the creative interpretations taken bringing three of Lawrence's stories into film.

     * "D.H. Lawrence: The Thinker As a Poet" by Fiona Becket (1997).

     * "Out of Sheer Rage, Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence" by Geoff Dyer (1997), a personal approach toward Dyer's own struggles as writer as well as toward some of Lawrence's less famous work.

     * Paul Poplawski devotes a book to Language, Art and Reality in D.H. Lawrence's "St. Mawr"  (1996).

     * "D.H. Lawrence, Future Primitive" by Dolores LaChapelle (1996) discusses ecological implications

     * "The Visionary D.H. Lawrence, Beyond Philosophy and Art" by Robert E. Montgomery (1994) considers relationships to people such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Jacob Boehme.

     "Sex in the Head, Visions of Feminity and Film in D.H. Lawrence" by Linda Ruth Williams (1993) asks how much sex was in Lawrence's head, and from which points of view.

     "Longman Critical Readers collection" was edited by Peter Widdowson (1992).

     "D.H. Lawrence: Language and Being" by Michael Bell (1992).

     "Modern Critical Views, D.H. Lawrence" edited by Harold Bloom (1986) includes a contribution by Sandra Gilbert.

    Earlier efforts by Edward Nehls (a 3-volume composite biography), Keith Sagar, Harry T. Moore, Paul Delany, Mark Spilka, and F.R. Leavis are well worth considering. Jeffrey Meyers's effort did not attract much critical praise.

    "Women In Love" was adapted quite well for the screen in the film by Ken Russell (1970). Glenda Jackson won the Best Actress Academy Award for her role as Gudrun. I care less for his interpretation of "The Rainbow", largely because Russell focused only on the last half of the novel.

    Critical writing on "Women In Love"  includes the "No Private Parts" chapter of "Another Kind of Love" by Christopher Craft (1994). Camille Paglia offers an interesting view on the same novel in her "On Literature and Art" section of "Vamps and Tramps" (1994).

    One can take both undergraduate and graduate degrees in "D.H. Lawrence Studies" at the University of Nottingham, England, which Lawrence himself attended.

    The fictional bird with which D.H. Lawrence associated himself was the phoenix.