Sea and Sardinia

In January 1921, D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda, whom he calls the 'q-b', the queen bee, left their home in Sicily for a short, impulsive journey to Sardinia. In this travel book he describes their crossing by steamer, the cold, poor inns and buses, the peasants in their costumes, the markets and the mountain villages, with a mixture of irritation, comedy and delight in a land he feels still lies outside the modern world.

Lawrence published the book in 1921, and it is one of his liveliest works, written in a rush of vivid impressions. Read his The Lost Girl and Sons and Lovers, and see his life.

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.