About D.H. Lawrence

[1885] DAVID HERBERT RICHARDS LAWRENCE is born on 11th September in Eastwood, a Nottinghamshire coal-mining town. He is the fourth of five children.

His father, Arthur Lawrence, is an illiterate, working-class coal-miner and his mother, Lydia Beardsall, is a genteel, middle-class, ex-school teacher. The mis-matched marriage of Arthur and Lydia is the root cause of the constant and bitter marital strife within the household. Young Lawrence takes his mother’s side.

[1898 - 1901] Lawrence wins a scholarship to Nottingham High School. He then takes a job as a clerk at Haywoods surgical appliance factory in Nottingham. He leaves after an attack of pneumonia. His brother, Ernest, suddenly dies in London in October 1901.

[1902 - 1906] Lawrence takes a pupil-teacher position at the British School in Eastwood and attends a teacher training centre in Ilkeston.

[1906 - 1908] Lawrence becomes a student at University College, Nottingham. Jessie Chambers enters one of his short stories - A Prelude - for the Nottinghamshire Guardian Short Story Competition. It wins first prize! After two years at University College, Lawrence leaves - with a teaching certificate and takes a teaching position in Croydon.

[1909] Jessie Chambers sends some of Lawrence’s poems to The English Review. They are published.

[1910] Lawrence breaks his ‘betrothal of six years standing’ to Jessie Chambers.

Lydia, Lawrence’s mother, dies of cancer. Lawrence assists her by administering an overdose of morphine.

[1911] Lawrence’s first novel, The White Peacock, is published.

[1912] Lawrence breaks his engagement to Louie Burrows. He meets Mrs. Alice Dax and has a brief affair with her. He meets the German baroness, Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of one of his professors at University College and the cousin of the famous Red Baron. They run away, firstly to Germany, then to Italy.

[1913] Sons and Lovers is published. It is criticized for its graphic depiction of sexual relations. Lawrence defends himself by stating that “whatever the blood feels, and believes, and says, is always true".

[1914] World War One breaks out. Lawrence and Frieda marry at Kensington registry office, London. The couple are unable to obtain passports for the duration of the war, and so are forced to live in various places in England, including Cornwall and Derbyshire.

[1915] The Rainbow is published. Lawrence is prosecuted for his scandalous use of profanity and his graphic descriptions of the sex act. The novel is suppressed and more than 1,000 copies of the book are burned outside the Royal Exchange in London.

[1917] Lawrence and Frieda are suspected of spying for the Germans and are expelled from their rented house in Cornwall.

[1919] The Lawrences journey throughout Europe, stopping in Sicily, Sardinia and Switzerland. Lawrence publishes Women in Love, the sequel to The Rainbow.

[1920] The Rainbow is published in New York.

[1921] Women in Love is published in London.

[1922] Aaron’s Rod, a novel that reflects the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche on Lawrence, is published. The Lawrences travel to Ceylon and Australia.

[1923] The Lawrences visit Mexico, New York and Los Angeles.

[1924 - 1925] Mabel Dodge Luhan, a New York socialite, gives the Lawrences her Kiowa Ranch in Taos, New Mexico, in return for the original manuscript of Sons and Lovers. Lawrence’s father, Arthur, dies.

[1925] While visiting Mexico City, Lawrence falls ill with tuberculosis and is forced to return to England.

[1926] The Lawrence’s settle near Florence. Frieda begins an affair with Angelino Ravagli, a former Italian infantry officer whom she will marry in 1950. Lawrence visits his hometown of Eastwood for the last time.

[1928] Lady Chatterley’s Lover is banned in the United Kingdom and the United States, creating a great demand for the book.

[1929] Lawrence’s Expressionist paintings, for which he gains posthumous renown, are declared obscene and some of the paintings are confiscated from an exhibition at London’s Warren Gallery.

[1930] Lawrence succumbs to tuberculosis and dies on Sunday, 2nd March in Vence, France. He is 44 years old. Frieda moves to Kiowa Ranch, New Mexico, where she builds a small memorial chapel that houses Lawrence’s ashes.

[1960] Penguin Books publishes an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover, after it is acquitted of obscenity charges brought under the Obscene Publications Act (the trial had lasted 6 days). Within a year the book sells two million copies, outselling even the Bible.

D.H. Lawrence, the miner’s son from Eastwood, is now recognised as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century.