The Rainbow (1915)

For both The Rainbow and Women in Love, you probably only need to be able to recognize the names Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen.

It follows three generations of the Brangwen family, focusing in particular on the sexual dynamics of its characters.

Lawrence's frank treatment of sexual desire and the power plays within relationships as a natural and even spiritual force of life, though perhaps tame by modern standards, caused The Rainbow to be prosecuted in an obscenity trial in late 1915, as a result of which all copies were seized and burnt. After this ban it was unavailable in Britain for 11 years, although editions were available in the USA.

Women in Love

It was a sequel to The Rainbow (1915), following the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops between Ursula and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who articulates many opinions associated with the author. The novel ranges over the whole of British society at the time of the First World War and eventually ends high up in the snows of the European Alps.

Like most of his works, Women in Love caused controversy over its sexual subject matter, and was only initially published for five years after it was first written. One early reviewer said of it "I do not claim to be a literary critic, but I know dirt when I smell it, and here is dirt in heaps - festering, putrid heaps which smell to high Heaven."

Sons and Lovers (1913)

It tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and a budding artist. This autobiographical novel is a brilliant evocation of life in a working class mining community.

“The Odour of Chrysanthemums”

The stry’s main character awaits her husband’s return from work in the mines, but he has been suffocated in a cave-in. The woman reflects on her unhappy marriage.

“The Horse Dealer’s Daughter”

This story is about a girl named Mabel who tries to commit suicide by drowning herself in a pond. A young doctor, Joe Ferguson, saves her. She then believes that he loves her. Although this idea never occurred to Joe, he begins to find that he indeed loves her. However, Mabel thinks she is "too awful" to be loved, and finds that when Joe declares over and over that he wants her and that he loves her, she is more scared about that than of Joe not wanting her.

Lawrence's non-fiction

"Edgar Allen Poe" – This essay extensively describes Poe’s writing style, which he describes as mechanical and scientific. He says that Poe’s stories are not stories at all, but a series of cause and effect. He says the Poe does not look at the human side of characters and instead treats them as inanimate objects with human characteristics (but still human).

"Thomas Hardy" - Lawrence chastises writers such as Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy, who, he argues, defile their own passionate impulses when in their emplotted judgments they side with social law against the primitive nature of their characters.

"Why the Novel Matters" - "The novel is the book of life. In this sense, the Bible is a great confused novel. You may say, it is about God. But it is really about man alive. Adam, Eve, Sarai, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Bath-sheba, Ruth, Esther, Solomon, Job, Isaiah, Jesus, mark, Judas, Paul, Peter: what is it but man alive, from start to finish? Man alive, not mere bits. Even the Lord is another man alive, in a burning bush, throwing the tablets of stone at Moses's head." (from 'Why the Novel Matters,' 1956)