The Rainbow

About this book

Across three generations, the Brangwen family farms the Marsh Farm on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, while the industrial world spreads around them. Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia; her daughter Anna marries Tom's nephew Will in a stormy, passionate marriage; and their daughter Ursula, the book's true heroine, struggles as a teacher in a harsh school, goes to university and refuses the life planned for women.

Context and significance

D. H. Lawrence published the novel in 1915; within weeks it was prosecuted for obscenity, and about a thousand copies were destroyed. Today it is seen as one of his finest books. Ursula's story continues in Women in Love; see also Sons and Lovers and 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.