D. H. Lawrence was an English writer, poet, playwright, essayist, and literary critic. He is regarded as one of the most influential and controversial figures of 20th-century English literature. His works explore the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization, and he championed instinct, vitality, and a natural, untamed sexuality as a response. His unflinching and often explicit explorations of human relationships led to severe persecution and censorship during his lifetime.

Name: David Herbert Lawrence
Date of birth: September 11, 1885 (Died: March 2, 1930)
Height: Approximately 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m)
Place of birth: Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
Family:
Parents’ names: Arthur John Lawrence (father, a coal miner who was often barely literate) and Lydia Beardsall (mother, a former schoolteacher from a more refined background). Their mismatched union and the resulting domestic conflict were a central theme in his early work.
Siblings: George Arthur Lawrence, William Ernest Lawrence, Emily Una Lawrence, and Lettice Ada Lawrence. The death of his beloved brother Ernest was a profound event that heavily influenced his novel Sons and Lovers.
Spouse: Frieda von Richthofen Weekley (m. 1914). She was the German aristocratic wife of his former professor, Ernest Weekley. Lawrence and Frieda eloped in 1912, and their passionate, tumultuous relationship became a cornerstone of his life and art.
Children: None.
Relatives: Frieda’s cousins were the famed German flying aces Manfred and Lothar von Richthofen (the “Red Baron” and his brother).
Profession: Writer, poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, painter.
Nationality: British
Religion: He was raised a Congregationalist Nonconformist. As an adult, he rejected organized religion, developing his own complex, personal quasi-religious philosophy that venerated nature, instinct, and a cosmic consciousness.
College or university attended:
Nottingham High School (on scholarship)
University College, Nottingham (now the University of Nottingham) – Earned a teaching certificate.
Biography and What Famous For:
David Herbert Lawrence’s life and work were forged in the class conflict and industrial landscape of his childhood. Born in the mining town of Eastwood, he was a frail child who felt the constant tension between his coarse, hard-drinking father and his genteel, aspirational mother. This deeply personal struggle became the psychological bedrock of his autobiographical masterpiece, Sons and Lovers (1913).
After a brief career as a schoolteacher, Lawrence committed himself to writing. His life was irrevocably changed when he met Frieda Weekley, with whom he fell in love and eloped to Germany. Their life together was a “savage pilgrimage”—a restless journey across the globe in search of a more authentic, primitive way of life, taking them to Italy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Australia, Mexico, and the United States.
Lawrence is most famous for his novels, which challenged the conventions of his time with their psychological depth and frank exploration of sexuality. His work was a sustained critique of modern industrial society, which he believed alienated humanity from its natural instincts and emotions.
His most significant and often controversial works include:
Sons and Lovers (1913): A powerful, semi-autobiographical novel about the emotional and psychological entanglement of a young artist, Paul Morel, with his possessive mother.
The Rainbow (1915): A multi-generational saga exploring the emotional and sexual lives of the Brangwen family. The novel was seized and prosecuted for obscenity upon publication, and copies were destroyed.
Women in Love (1920): A sequel to The Rainbow, this novel delves into the complex relationships of two sisters, Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen, and their lovers. It is considered a masterwork of modernist literature for its psychological complexity and symbolic intensity.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928): His most notorious novel, it tells the story of an upper-class woman’s affair with her gamekeeper. With its explicit descriptions of sex and use of four-letter words, it was banned for decades in the UK and US. The landmark 1960 obscenity trial against its publisher, Penguin Books, was a pivotal moment in the history of free expression.
Lawrence’s constant battles with censors, his poverty, and his frail health (he suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life) defined his existence. Beyond his novels, he was a prolific poet, a brilliant writer of short stories and novellas (such as The Fox and St Mawr), and a perceptive travel writer. In his final years, he also took up painting, producing works that were also seized by police for being indecent. He died in Vence, France, at the age of 44.
Have participated (Selected Works):
Novels:
The White Peacock (1911)
The Trespasser (1912)
Sons and Lovers (1913)
The Rainbow (1915)
Women in Love (1920)
The Lost Girl (1920)
Aaron’s Rod (1922)
Kangaroo (1923)
The Plumed Serpent (1926)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
Short Story Collections:
The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914)
England, My England and Other Stories (1922)
The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories (1928)
The Rocking-Horse Winner (1926, standalone story)
Poetry Collections:
Love Poems and Others (1913)
Amores (1916)
Look! We Have Come Through! (1917)
Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923)
Pansies (1929)
Non-fiction and Travel Writing:
Twilight in Italy (1916)
Sea and Sardinia (1921)
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921)
Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
Mornings in Mexico (1927)
Apocalypse (1931)