David Herbert Lawrence was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, travel writer, essayist, and painter. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation and industrialization, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct. Four of his most famous novels — Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)— were the subject of censorship trials for their radical portrayals of romance, sexuality and use of explicit language.
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather George du Maurier was a writer and cartoonist.
Daphne, a figure in Greek mythology, is a naiad, a variety of female nymph associated with fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of freshwater.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is the final novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Florence, Italy, and in 1929, in Paris, France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies. The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of then-unprintable profane words. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1923.
The Nigger of the "Narcissus": A Tale of the Forecastle, first published in the United States as The Children of the Sea, is an 1897 novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad. The central character is an Afro-Caribbean man who is ill at sea while aboard the trading ship Narcissus heading towards London. Due to the offensiveness of the word nigger in the title, it was renamed The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle for the 1897 US edition.
Ladybirds (Coccinellidae) are a family of beetles.
Women in Love is a 1920 novel by English author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his earlier novel, The Rainbow (1915), and follows 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 Brangwen and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who articulates many opinions associated with the author. The emotional relationships thus established are given further depth and tension by an intense psychological and physical attraction between Gerald and Rupert.
The Rainbow is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence, first published by Methuen & Co. in 1915. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, focusing particularly on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfilment within the confining structures of English social life. Lawrence's 1920 novel Women in Love is a sequel to The Rainbow.
The Fox is a novella by D. H. Lawrence which first appeared in The Dial in 1922. Set in Berkshire, England, during World War I, The Fox, like many of D. H. Lawrence's other major works, deals with the psychological relationships of three protagonists in a triangle of love and hatred. Without the help of any male laborers, Nellie March and Jill Banford struggle to maintain a marginal livelihood at the Bailey Farm. A fox has raged through the poultry, and although the women—particularly the more masculine Nellie—have tried to shoot the intruder, he seems always to elude traps or gunshot.
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence is an ongoing project by Cambridge University Press to produce definitive editions of the writings of D. H. Lawrence. It is a major scholarly undertaking that strives to provide new versions of the texts as close as can be determined to what the author intended.
The White Peacock is the first novel by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1911, though with 1910 on the title page. Lawrence started the novel in 1906 and then rewrote it three times. The early versions had the working title of Laetitia.
Kangaroo is a 1923 novel by D.H. Lawrence. It is set in Australia.
St Mawr is a short novel written by D. H. Lawrence. It was first published in 1925.
The Plumed Serpent is a 1926 political, mythological, and romance novel by D. H. Lawrence; The novel was published in January of 1926 and was reprinted in March of 1926. Lawrence conceived the idea for the novel while visiting Mexico in 1923, and its themes reflect his experiences there. The novel was first published by Martin Secker's firm in the United Kingdom and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States; an early draft was published as Quetzalcoatl by Black Swan Books in 1995. The novel's plot concerns Kate Leslie, an Irish tourist who visits Mexico after the Mexican Revolution. She encounters Don Cipriano, a Mexican general who supports a religious movement, the Men of Quetzalcoatl, founded by his friend Don Ramón Carrasco. Within this movement, Cipriano is identified with Huitzilopochtli and Ramón with Quetzalcoatl. Kate eventually agrees to marry Cipriano, while the Men of Quetzalcoatl, with the help of a new president, bring about an end to Christianity in Mexico, replacing it with pagan Quetzalcoatl worship.
The Captain's Doll is a short story or novella by the English author D. H. Lawrence. It was written in 1921 and first published by Martin Secker in March 1923 in a volume with The Ladybird and The Fox. It was the basis of the 1983 TV film of the same name with Jeremy Irons as the Captain.
Love and Freindship [sic] is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790. While aged 11–18, Austen wrote her tales in three notebooks. These still exist, one in the Bodleian Library and the other two in the British Museum. They contain, among other works, Love and Freindship, written when she was 14, and The History of England, written at 15.
John Thomas and Lady Jane is a 1927 novel by D. H. Lawrence. The novel is the second, less widely known, version of a story that was later told in the more famous, once-controversial, third version Lady Chatterley's Lover, published in 1928. John Thomas and Lady Jane are the pet names for the genitalia of the protagonists.
"The book, according to a statement from Ferran, is a more simple, direct telling of the tale, with a few key differences. Parkin, the gamekeeper, is here a simple man from the village who chose his profession over being a miner, so that he could preserve his solitude. In the 1928 novel, he’s named Mellors and, though working-class, is a former army officer." — Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times arts critic
Anne Heywood was a British film actress, who is best known for her Golden Globe-nominated performance in the 1967 film version of D.H. Lawrence's The Fox.
Brynhild Olivier was one of four sisters noted for their progressive ideas, beauty and associations with both Rupert Brooke and his Cambridge circle of Neo-pagans, as well as the Bloomsbury Group. Born in Bloomsbury, London, Brynhild Olivier was raised and home schooled in Jamaica and Limpsfield, Surrey. Although she had no higher education, she became involved in cultural activities at Cambridge University, through her sisters, who were undergraduates there.
