D. H. Lawrence

This is the first ever edition of the early version of Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence's highly popular autobiographical novel. Amongst all the surviving early drafts of Lawrence's works this is the most different from the final version; as he rewrote, Lawrence discarded many episodes, some of them stories from his childhood not recorded anywhere else. It is less polished than Sons and Lovers, but it is full of powerful, spontaneous, dramatic writing: there is more humour and charm, more raw violence and nervous energy. This volume also contains remarkable documents written by Lawrence's girlfriend Jessie Chambers, the model for Miriam in Paul Morel and in Sons and Lovers, in which she gives Lawrence some hostile criticisms and writes out for him her own versions of some of his episodes. In addition there is a fragment of a novel about his mother's childhood, facsimiles of manuscript pages, maps, and scholarly notes and apparatus.

The Penguin English Library Edition of Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence'"She was a brazen hussy.""She wasn't. - And she was pretty, wasn't she?""I didn't look ... And tell your girls, my son, that when they're running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you - tell them that - brazen baggages you meet at dancing classes"'The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

To be oneself was a supreme, gleaming triumph of infinity This is the insight that flashes upon Ursula as she struggles to assert her individuality and to stand separate from her family and her surroundings on the brink of womanhood and the modern world. In The Rainbow (1915) Lawrence challenged the customary limitations of language and convention to carry into the structure of his prose the fascination with boundaries and space that characterize the entire novel. Condemned and suppressed on its first publication for its open treatment of sexuality and its `unpatriotic' spirit, the novel chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. The central figure of ursula becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail. In her introduction to this edition Kate Flint illuminates Lawrence's aims and achievements against the background of the burgeoning century. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

With its frank portrayal of human passion and sexual desire, D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow was banned as 'obscene' in Britain shortly after first publication. Set in the rural Midlands, The Rainbow chronicles the lives of three generations of the Brangwen family over a period of more than 60 years, setting them against the emergence of modern England. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. All are seeking individual fulfilment, but it is Ursula, Anne's spirited daughter, who in her search for self-knowedge, becomes the focus of Lawrence's examination of relationships and the conflicts they bring, and the inextricable mingling of the physical and the spiritual. Suffused with Biblical imagery, The Rainbow addresses searching human issues in a setting of precise and vivid detail.In his introduction James Wood discusses Lawrence's writing style and the tensions and themes of The Rainbow. This Penguin edition reproduces the Cambridge text, which provides a text as close as possible to Lawrence's original. It also includes suggested further reading, a fragment of 'The Sisters II' from his first draft, and chronologies of Lawrence's life and of The Rainbow's Brangwen family.Edited with an introduction by James Wood. 'A brave and important book, passionate and wildly ambitious'Independent on Sunday

In these impressions of the Italian countryside: "Twilight in Italy", "Sea and Sardina", and "Etruscan Places", the author transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty.

The lull continued. Then suddenly came sharp orders, and a new direction of the guns, and an intense, exciting activity. Yet at the center the soul remained dark and aloof, alone. But even so, it was the soul that heard the new sound: the new, deep "papp!" of a gun that seemed to touch right upon the soul. He kept up the rapid activity at the machine-gun, sweating. But in his soul was the echo of the new, deep sound, deeper than life. And in confirmation came the awful faint whistling of a shell, advancing almost suddenly into a piercing, tearing shriek that would tear through the membrane of life. * This collection of stories includes "England, My England," "Tickets, Please," "The Blind Man," "Monkey Nuts," "Wintry Peacock," "You Touched Me," "Samson and Delilah," "The Primrose Path," "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," and "Fanny and Annie."