Sons and Lovers

About this book

Paul Morel grows up in a mining village in Nottinghamshire, between a rough, drinking father who works the pits and a proud, ambitious mother who pours all her love into her sons. As Paul becomes a young man and an artist, he finds that his mother's love makes it impossible for him to give himself fully to the women he loves, gentle Miriam and passionate Clara.

Context and significance

Published in 1913 and closely based on D. H. Lawrence's own family, Sons and Lovers is a powerful novel about mothers and sons, working-class life and the struggle to grow up. Its descriptions of the countryside and the mining town are among the finest in English fiction.

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.