A miner’s son from Nottingham, Lawrence was a prolific writer of short stories, essays, poems and novels before his death at the age of forty-four in 1930. He was a rebellious, restless and polemical writer who was viewed with suspicion by the establishment, especially after his marriage in 1914 to the German Frieda von Richthofen.

The earlier novels – Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow and Women in Love– see Lawrence exploring relationships with realism and intensity. Philosophically, his novels warn against the danger of overemphasizing the importance of the mind at the expense of the body. His belief in the importance of touch and intimacy is seen in some of the depictions of sex in the novels that made Lawrence a controversial figure in his lifetime. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was attacked for its sexual content and was banned until 1960, when Penguin won the right to publish the book after a sensational trial.