Sons and Lovers

David Herbert Lawrence

Modern Library, 1997 - Fiction - 654 pages

Sons and Lovers is one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century. It was immediately recognized as the first great modern restatement of the oedipal drama when it appeared in 1913 and is widely considered the major work of D.H. Lawrence's early period. This intensely autobiographical novel recounts the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing to manhood in a British working class family rife with conflict. The author's vivid evocation of life in a Nottingham mining village in the years before the First World War and his depiction of the all-consuming nature of possessive love and sexual attraction make this one of his most powerful novels.
"Of all Lawrence's work, Sons and Lovers tells us most about the emotional source of his ideas," observed Diana Trilling. "The famous Lawrence theme of the struggle for sexual power--and he is sure that all the struggles of civilized life have their root in this primary contest--is the constantly elaborated statement of the fierce battle which tore Lawrence's family." For Kate Millett, "Sons and Lovers is a great novel because it has the ring of something written from deeply felt experience. The past remembered, it conveys more of Lawrence's own knowledge of life than anything else he wrote. His other novels appear somehow artificial beside it."

What people are saying

SONS AND LOVERS

User Review  - Kirkus

When Sons and Lovers was first seen by its reading public in 1913, its publishers had in fact, out of caution and timidity, shortened Lawrence's originally submitted version by about ten percent—cuts ...

Review: Sons and Lovers

User Review  - Steve TK - Goodreads

This semi-autobiographical novel is important in understanding Lawrence's relationships to class, to his mother, and to love and sex. And it's a remarkably modern read, considering that it was ...

Contents

• The Early Married Life of the Morels: 3
• The Birth of Paul and Another Battle: 43
• The Casting Off of MorelThe Taking On of William: 72

About the author

D. H. Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. His father was a coal miner, his mother a former lace worker and unsuccessful haberdasher. He began school just
before the age of four, but respiratory illness and a weak constitution forced him to remain home intermittently. Two months before his sixteenth birthday, he went to work as a clerk in a badly ventilated factory
that made medical supplies, and eventually contracted pneumonia. After a long convalescence, he got a job as a student teacher, but privately he resolved to become a poet. He began writing seriously in 1906
and entered University College, Nottingham, to earn his teacher's certificate. Two years later he started teaching elementary school full-time. He published his first poems in the English Review in 1909.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Sons and Lovers; Modern Library; The Modern library of the world's best books
• Author: David Herbert Lawrence
• Illustrated by: David Herbert Lawrence
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Modern Library, 1997
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 10, 2008
• ISBN: 0679602682, 9780679602682
• Length: 654 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Psychological