18 Sep DH Lawrence

DH Lawrence was born in 1885 in the bleak coal mining town of Eastwood, near Nottingham. His childhood home is now the DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum: worth a visit on your next literary tour of England. Lawrence wrote a total of twelve novels – including Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920) – plus collections of short stories and poems, but he will probably be most remembered for Lady Chatterley’s Lover. First published in Italy in 1928, it was not until after the famous obscenity trial in London in 1960 that an unexpurgated edition was published in the UK.

In 1919, with his wife Frieda, Lawrence started a life-long self-imposed exile from England, first in Italy and then the United States. Here the Lawrences purchased a 160-acre ranch (now called the DH Lawrence Ranch) in Taos, New Mexico and they lived there from 1922 to 1925. Lawrence died in 1930 in Vence, southern France, aged 44. In 1935 his body was exhumed at Frieda’s request, cremated and brought back to Taos, where Frieda had returned to live out her life.