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Fiction

Notes 21.1 D.H. Lawrence—Sons and Lovers: Introduction to the Author

21.1.1 Life and Career

Early life
The fourth child of Arthur John Lawrence, a barely literate miner, and Lydia, a former schoolmistress,
Lawrence spent his formative years in the coal mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire.
The house, in which he was born, in Eastwood, 8a Victoria Street, is now the D.H. Lawrence
Birthplace Museum. His working class background and the tensions between his parents provided
the raw material for a number of his early works.

Did u know? Lawrence would return to this locality and often wrote about nearby Underwood,
calling it; “the country of my heart,” as a setting for much of his fiction.

The young Lawrence attended Beauvale Board School from 1891 until 1898, becoming the first
local pupil to win a County Council scholarship to Nottingham High School in nearby Nottingham.
He left in 1901, working for three months as a junior clerk at Haywood’s surgical appliances
factory, but a severe bout of pneumonia, the result of being accosted by a group of factory
girls, ended this career. He often visited Hagg’s Farm, the home of the Chambers family, and
began a friendship with Jessie Chambers. An important aspect of this relationship with Jessie
and other adolescent acquaintances was a shared love of books, an interest that lasted throughout
Lawrence’s life. In the years 1902 to 1906 Lawrence served as a pupil teacher at the British
School, Eastwood. He went on to become a full-time student and received a teaching certificate
from University College Nottingham in 1908. During these early years he was working on his
first poems, some short stories, and a draft of a novel, Laetitia, that was eventually to becomes
- The White Peacock. At the end of 1907 he won a short story competition in the Nottingham
Guardian, the first time that he had gained any wider recognition for his literary talents.

Early career

In the autumn of 1908 the newly qualified Lawrence left his childhood home for London.
While teaching in Davidson Road School, Croydon, he continued writing. Some of the early
poetry, submitted by Jessie Chambers, came to the attention of Ford Madox Ford, then known
as Ford Hermann Hueffer and editor of the influential The English Review. Hueffer then
commissioned the story Odour of Chrysanthemums which, when published in that magazine,
encouraged Heinemann, a London publisher, to ask Lawrence for more work. His career as a
professional author now began in earnest, although he taught for a further year. Shortly after
the final proofs of his first published novel The White Peacock appeared in 1910, Lawrence’s
mother died. She had been ill with cancer. The young man was devastated and he was to
describe the next few months as his “sick year.” It is clear that Lawrence had an extremely
close relationship with his mother and his grief following her death became a major turning
point in his life, just as the death of Mrs. Morel forms a major turning point in his autobiographical
novel Sons and Lovers, a work that draws upon much of the writer’s provincial upbringing.
In 1911 Lawrence was introduced to Edward Garnett, a publisher’s reader, who acted as a
mentor, provided further encouragement, and became a valued friend, as Garnett’s son David
was also. Throughout these months the young author revised Paul Morel, the first draft of

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