D.H. Lawrence Books In Order

Publication Order of Brangwen Family Books

Publication Order of Sons and Lovers Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Chapbooks

Publication Order of Plays

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Short Story Anthologies

Publication Order of Anthologies

David Herbert Lawrence was an English painter, literary critic, essayist, playwright, poet, and novelist that was born in 1885 and died in 1930. He was born at Brinsley Colliry to barely literate miner Arthur John Lawrence and teacher Lydia Beardsall. Lawrence spent much of his childhood in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, a coalmining town of England. The tension between his parents and the working class lives the family led was the inspiration for several of his early works. Despite the financial difficulties in his family, he had a very carefree childhood as he found refuge in the open hill country and forests of Eastwood, where he acquired an appreciation of the natural environment. He went to Beauvale Board School, and later won a scholarship to Nottingham High School. Between 1901 and 1906, he taught at University College Nottingham and started writing the very first of his poems, short stories and his debut novel “The White Peacock” during his free time. He got his first break in 1907 when he got his short story published in the Nottingham Guardian. DH Lawrence wrote Dickensian like novels that analyzed the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and modernity. Some of the themes that he deals with include instinct, spontaneity, vitality, emotional health, and sexuality. As a man with radical opinions, he was a victim of misrepresentation, censorship, and official persecution for much of his later life. By the time of his death, he had made a name for himself as one of the greatest English novelists who was a champion of moral seriousness and artistic integrity.

His biggest break came in 1909 when he met and befriended Jessie Chambers, who used her connections to get a few of his poems featured on “English Review”. The publishers at the English Review so loved Lawrence’s work that they published his first novel “The White Peacock” in 1911. Within a year, he had published his second novel “The Trespasser” that was a foreshadowing of the themes such as class divides, and mismatched marriage that were common in his later works. His life completely changed when he met the wife of his old Nottingham professor and fell hopelessly in love. He quit his teaching job and became a writer eloping with Frieda his professor’s wife, with whom he ran away with to Germany and Italy. He wrote his first novel masterpiece “Sons and Lovers” in 1913, an autobiographical novel that is deemed one of the best English novels of the century. In 1914, he published the “Prussian Officer” a collection of critically acclaimed short stories that he later followed with the sexually explicit “The Rainbow” in 1915. He would publish the second half of the story he had started in The Rainbow in 1920 with the publication of “Women in Love”. Moving between the UK, the US and Italy over several years, he published “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” his most infamous and best-known novel in 1928. He was afflicted by acute tuberculosis in the latter years of his life and in 1930, he died aged 44. He is considered one of the great English writers of the 20th century alongside the likes of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

Lawrence is best known for his four works “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, “Women in Love”, “The Rainbow”, and “Sons and Lovers”. In his novels, he explores the lives of the characters set in an industrial environment. In particular, the author is concerned with the nature of relationships in an industrial setting and often gives his personal philosophy through his characters. His views on sexuality and his representation of them were shocking for the time, though they are a perfect exposition of his being and personal perspectives. For instance, the novel “The Rainbow” follows the lives of three generations of family that lives in Nottinghamshire and ultimately focuses on Ursula. Ursula is the latest member of the family and has aspirations of becoming more than a housewife unlike her forbears. “Women in Love” is an exploration of the intricate relationships between four characters, the most significant of which are Gudrun and Ursula. The novels challenge the notions of marriage, friendship, sexual experience, gender, economic growth, politics, and arts that were modernistic. Lawrence writes in a relatively straightforward and frank manner that ultimately led to his most popular books being banned for insulting the sensibilities of the time. Perhaps the biggest gripe the authorities of the time had with him was his focus on same sex relationships as was portrayed by characters such as Ursula and two principal male characters of “Women in Love”.

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is the story of Constance Reid a young woman married to Sir Clifford Chatter, who is a well-built handsome man paralyzed from the waist down, from an injury in combat. Due to his injuries, he has physical limitations, which he makes worse with his emotional neglect of his wife. Due to the distance between them, Constance is in a state of frustration that she gets into an affair with Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper. There is huge class difference between the two, which is one of the major themes in the novel as the author highlights how the intellectual exert their dominance over the working class. For Constance, she comes to the realization that intellect is not enough to live a fulfilled life, as she also needs physical satisfaction. She comes to the realization after she has one of her most intense sexual experiences when she is with Mellors. As such, the author suggests that love is in the main a function of the body rather than the mind.

“Sons and Lovers” is an incredibly philosophical novel that is some kind of autobiography of DH Lawrence. Gertrude finds her marriage to Walter Morel has become a war zone. Walter is often violent and is an uneducated man as compared to the delicate and ladylike Gertrude, who is devoted to her family. She is particularly doting of her two sons Paul and William, and is determined to ensure they do not end up working in the dank and dirty coalmines, where their father earns a living. But Paul does not take kindly to his mother’s attentions and seeks to find an escape by having a relationship with girls. The novel is set in the highlands of Nottinghamshire, and portrays the clash of generations, adolescence, and childhood that DH Lawrence experienced as a child.