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Alvina Houghton, the only daughter of a draper in a Midlands mining town, refuses the dull life expected of her, trains as a midwife, and then helps with her…
Alvina Houghton, the only daughter of a draper in a Midlands mining town, refuses the dull life expected of her, trains as a midwife, and then helps with her father's failing business schemes, among them a cinema with a troupe of travelling performers, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, who perform an act as 'Red Indians'. Among them is Ciccio, a handsome, silent Italian, and Alvina falls in love with him and follows him to a poor mountain village in Italy.
Context and significance
D. H. Lawrence published the novel in 1920, and it won the James Tait Black Prize, the only literary prize he received in his lifetime. Read The Rainbow and Sea and Sardinia, and see his life.
About the author
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) was born in a mining town in Nottinghamshire, the son of a coal miner and a former teacher, and trained as a teacher himself. In 1912 he eloped with Frieda Weekley, the German wife of his former professor, and his novel Sons and Lovers (1913), drawn from his own family, made his name.
His next novel, The Rainbow, was banned, and he spent his last years travelling restlessly through Italy, Australia, Mexico and New Mexico, writing novels, poems, travel books and essays and painting. He died of tuberculosis in France at forty-four.