| This outline is designed not as a substitute for the text of Sons and Lovers but as an instructive and motivating guide to the work of D. H. Lawrence, specifically the novel presently under discussion. |
| It has been said with authority that Sons and Lovers, the classic story of a boy growing up in a mining town in Nottinghamshire, represents Lawrence's own childhood and his own family. Thus, a brief review of Lawrence's life might be of interest to the reader before approaching the novel. |
| David Herbert Lawrence was born at Eastwood, England, on September 11, 1885, the fourth child of a collier father and a genteel mother. He was educated at Nottingham High School and University College, Nottingham. From the age of seventeen to twenty-one, he taught miners' children in a tough elementary school. For the next two years he was at Nottingham University. At the age of twenty-three he left Notthingham University to teach in an elementary school in Croydon. In 1909, his poems were submitted and accepted by an important literary magazine, The English Review. Afterwards, two publishers, Garnett and Hueffer, who later became Lawrence's good friends, published The White Peacock, The Trespasser, Love Poems, and Sons and Lovers. Lawrence was, then, launched into the literary world during the twenties. He was recognized almost at once as a young writer of great force and originality. |
| The first important period of his life ended with the death of his mother in 1910. The next phase began with his meeting Frieda Weekley Richthofen, daughter of a German Baron, wife of a former professor and mother of three. In 1912, Frieda left her husband and three children and went with Lawrence to Metz, where her family lived. During this time, Lawrence was arrested on suspicion |
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