Green star Sirius Brightest star in the sky, also known as the Dog Star. Sirius appears to be bluish white so Lawrence’s identification of it as green is mysterious; however, the first line of his poem ‘Winter Dawn’ also refers to ‘Green star Sirius’ (The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren Roberts (Penguin Books, 1977), p. 250).
Bond Street Fashionable shopping street in Mayfair, central London.
a few acres of rock … outer fringe of the isles In 1925, Mackenzie paid £500 for the Shiant Isles, consisting of two small islands, several islets and other outlying rocks in the North Minch off the east coast of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.
Golders Green Suburb of north-west London.
THINGS
THINGS In a letter of 13 September 1928, Lawrence wrote to his friend Earl Henry Brewster (1878–1957): ‘Have a most amusing story of mine in Amer. Bookman – called “Things” – you’ll think it’s you, but it isn’t’ (Letters, vi. 562). Despite the disclaimer, Lawrence used significant details from the lives of Earl and his wife Achsah Barlow Brewster (1878–1945), expatriate Americans living near Florence in Italy. The Brewsters were committed Buddhists (see note), in doctrine and meditative practices, provoking Lawrence to complain that ‘I seriously think Buddha and deep breathing are rather a bane, both of them’ (Letters, vii.316). He could also be exasperated by the Brewsters’ priorities for expenditure: ‘They say they have no money, so the first thing they do is to hire a grand piano’ (Letters, vii. 577). However, when his neighbours at the Villa Mirenda near Florence in 1928, Arthur Gair Wilkinson (1882–1957) and family, came to move from their Villa Poggi, Lawrence described them too as ‘mere wraiths, having packed up every old rag, pot, pan and whisker with the sanctity of pure idealists cherishing their goods’ (Letters, vi. 343). Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether either family ever secured the financial means to gather such European treasures as the Melvilles accumulate. Another possible influence is the wealthy American patron of the arts Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879–1962), whom Lawrence had known when he lived in New Mexico and who had acquired significant quantities of furniture and other artefacts on her visits to Europe.
New England Region in the north-east of the United States, with a reputation for refined taste, manners and culture, comprising the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
“Indian thought” … Mrs Besant Annie Besant (1847–1933) embraced theosophy (see note) in 1889 and, as the protégée of its founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–91), became President of the Theosophical Society in New York by 1907. Theosophy borrows many doctrines and much of its vocabulary from Hindu and Buddhist teaching, hence Lawrence’s association of her with ‘Indian thought’. Mrs Besant was also involved in Indian nationalist politics, founding the Indian Home Rule League in 1916 and becoming president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
Boulevard Montparnasse Situated on the Left Bank of the Seine and renowned as a bohemian centre for painters, composers and writers. The favourable exchange rate during much of the 1920s ensured that expatriates in particular could live here cheaply. The name ‘Montparnasse’ derives from Mount Parnassus which, in Greek mythology, was the home of the Muses.
pure impressionists, Monet and his followers Impressionism was a movement in painting originating in France during the 1870s which sought to capture immediate visual impressions as determined by the effect of changing light and atmosphere. Claude Monet (1840–1926) was an initiator of the Impressionist style; his painting Impression, Sunrise (1872) gave the movement its name.
Montmartre … Tuileries Montmartre is the Right Bank counterpart to the district of Montparnasse and similarly renowned as a bohemian area. The Tuileries are formal gardens next to the Louvre.
Buddha The ‘Awakened’ or ‘Enlightened’ one and founder of Buddhism. Known at birth as Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563-c. 483 BC), he abandoned a life of luxury to devote himself first to asceticism and then meditation. The fundamental insight of Buddhism is that the causes of suffering are attachment and desire; wisdom and virtue teach that liberation from such impulses is the key to the blissful state of Nirvana (see Glossary).
theosophy Literally ‘divine wisdom’, theosophy understands the universe as a spiritual rather than material formation. God is the source of all being and all good, while the existence of evil can be ascribed to human desire for material benefits; like Buddhism, theosophy teaches that such desires may be overcome by absorption in the spiritual realm. For Lawrence’s estimation of Madame Blavatsky’s theosophy, see Letters, iii. 150, 298–9.
bean-stalk … a further world Lawrence combines a fairytale and a nursery rhyme. In the fairytale ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, Jack acquires magic beans from which a beanstalk grows up into the clouds, leading him to the castle of a giant and a goose that lays golden eggs. The nursery rhyme ‘Jack and Jill’ begins: ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill / To fetch a pail of water; / Jack fell down and broke his crown / And Jill came tumbling after.’
Arno River flowing through Florence and Pisa.
To me they are Chartres City south-west of Paris, famous for its thirteenth-century cathedral, often considered the world’s finest Gothic building. The colours of Valerie’s curtains recall for her the effect of the stained-glass windows in this cathedral.
sixteenth-century Venetian book-case Venetian furniture of the sixteenth century was typically highly decorated and often used designs based on architectural features such as columns, arches and pediments.
holy of holies Figuratively, sacred and awe-inspiring. In the instructions issued to Moses about ‘the pattern of the tabernacle’ (Exodus xxv.9) that is to be built within a future Temple of Jerusalem, a veil is to divide ‘the holy place’ from the ‘most holy’ (Exodus xxvi.33) where the spirit of God will dwell. The latter is the ‘holy of holies’.
perilous … Ark of the Covenant The Ark of the Covenant was an ornate gold-plated chest containing the stone tablets given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. Its last resting place was in the ‘most holy’ area in the Temple of Jerusalem (see note). The holiness of the Ark made contact with it highly perilous (see Leviticus xvi. 1–13).
Bologna … Siena Bologna is at the foot of the Apennines mountains, north of Florence; Siena is south of Florence.
Sodom and Gomorrah See note.
Fifth Avenue Major thoroughfare in Manhattan, running along the eastern side of Central Park, with elegant mansions that justified the name Millionaires’ Row even in the 1920s.
Statue of Liberty See note.
returned like dogs to our vomit Proverbs xxvi.11: ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.’
Cleveland university Earl Brewster studied at the Cleveland School of Art (established 1882); this may have motivated Lawrence to inaugurate a Cleveland University to employ his fictional character. (Cleveland State University did not come into formal existence until 1964.)
furnaces of Cleveland On the southern shore of Lake Erie and therefore positioned to take advantage of the coal and oil fields of Pennsylvania and the Minnesota iron-ore mines, Cleveland, Ohio, grew rapidly into a major steel and industrial centre during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was the fifth largest city in the United States by 1920.
Ravenna bishop’s chair The Melvilles’ bishop’s chair recalls the famous ivory throne of Archbishop Maximian of Ravenna (d. 556) with carved panels depicting biblical scenes.
Notes
1. Philip Larkin, Collected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 2001), p. 167.
2. Diana Trilling, Introduction to The Portable D. H. Lawrence (London: Penguin Books, 1947; 1980), p. 1.
3. Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters 1940–77, ed. Dimitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli (London: Vintage Books, 1991). Lawrence’s ashes are buried in Taos, New Mexico. Socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan swapped a ranch in Taos in return for the origina
l manuscript of Sons and Lovers.
4. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1971; London: Virago, 1977), p. 39.
5. Tony Hoagland, Donkey Gospel (London: Gray wolf Press, 1998).
6. Melvyn Bragg, ‘D. H. Lawrence, the Country of His Heart’, in D. H. Lawrence 1885–1930, A Celebration, ed. Andrew Cooper (Nottingham: D. H. Lawrence Society, 1985), p. 39.
7. D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence 1901–13, vol. i, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), P. 471.
8. John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (London: Penguin Books), p. 13.
9. Lawrence planned a ‘Burns novel’, writing of his proposed subject, ‘He seems a good deal like myself’: Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. xxxvii.
10. The Athenaeum (1828–1921) published many great writers, including T. S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf. In 1921 it was incorporated into the Nation, which later merged with the New Statesman. The quotation comes from England, My England and Other Stories, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. xlix.
11. Board schools catered for five to ten year olds and were run by locally elected school boards. They were a result of the 1870 Education Act.
12. Morning Post, 9 February 1911, reproduced in D. H. Lawrence: The Critical Heritage, ed. R. P. Draper (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 36.
13. England, My England and Other Stories, ed. Bruce Steele, p. xxxii.
14. Unsigned review in Outlook (1914), reproduced in D. H. Lawrence: The Critical Heritage, p. 82.
15. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 340.
16. The Eye, Toronto free listing paper, November 2005.
17. Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, p. xxiii.
Acknowledgements
This volume uses the texts established by the Cambridge University Press editions of D. H. Lawrence’s short stories (with the exception of ‘Vin Ordinaire’: see A Note on the Texts). I am greatly indebted to the Cambridge editors: Michael Herbert, Christa Jansohn, Bethan Jones, Dieter Mehl, Bruce Steele, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen. I am also particularly grateful to Linda Bree and Alison Powell of Cambridge University Press for supplying me with corrected proofs for the text of the story ‘Things’.
The Explanatory Notes for each Cambridge edition were a valuable editorial resource, as were the notes prepared for the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics and Oxford World’s Classics editions of Lawrence’s short stories. My thanks are due to Antony Atkins, Michael Bell, Keith Cushman, Brian Finney and N. H. Reeve.
I also wish to thank Laura Barber for initiating this project and Mariateresa Boffo and Marcella Edwards at Penguin for guiding me through it. Lindeth Vasey and Sally Boyles gave me essential advice at every stage; I am very grateful for their forbearance. Meticulous proofreading by Henry Maas and Stephen Ryan caught serious and silly errors that I was very relieved to have the chance to correct. I would also like to thank John Worthen and Paul Poplawski for all their generous and expert advice throughout the preparation of this edition.
S. W.
March 2006
D. H. LAWRENCE
* * *
PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE WOMAN WHO RODE AWAY/ST. MAWR/THE PRINCESS
These three works, all written in 1924, explore the profound effects on protagonists who embark on psychological voyages of liberation. In St. Mawr, Lou Witt buys a beautiful, untamable bay stallion and discovers an intense emotional affinity with the horse that she cannot feel with her husband. This superb novella displays Lawrence’s mastery of satirical comedy in a scathing depiction of London’s fashionable high society. In ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’ a woman’s religious quest in Mexico brings great danger – and astonishing self-discovery, while ‘The Princess’ portrays the intimacy between an aloof woman and her male guide as she ventures into the wilderness of New Mexico in search of new experiences.
In his introduction, James Lasdun discusses the theme of liberation and the ways in which it is conveyed in these works. Using the restored texts of the Cambridge edition, this volume includes a new chronology by Paul Poplawski.
‘Lawrence urged men and women to live … to glory in the exhilarating terror of this brief life’ Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times
Edited by Brian Finney, Christa Jansohn and Dieter Mehl
with notes by Paul Poplawski and an introduction by James Lasdun
* * *
www.penguin.com
D. H. LAWRENCE
* * *
PENGUIN CLASSICS
SONS AND LOVERS
The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, fastidious Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul – determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is inevitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother’s suffocating grasp by entering into relationships with other women. Set in Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers (1913) is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.
In his introduction, Blake Morrison discusses the novel’s place in Lawrence’s life and his depiction of the mother-son relationship, sex and politics. Using the complete and restored text of the Cambridge edition, this volume includes a new chronology and further reading by Paul Poplawski.
‘Lawrence’s masterpiece … a revelation’ Anthony Burgess
‘Momentous – a great book’ Blake Morrison
Edited by Helen Baron and Carl Baron
With an introduction by Blake Morrison
* * *
www.penguin.com
D. H. LAWRENCE
* * *
PENGUIN CLASSICS
LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER
Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to Mellors, her husband’s gamekeeper, with whom she embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled existence. Can she find true equality with Mellors, despite the vast gulf between their positions in society? One of the most controversial novels in English literature, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is an erotically charged and psychologically powerful depiction of adult relationships.
In her introduction, Doris Lessing discusses the influence of Lawrence’s sexual politics, his relationship with his wife Frieda and his attitude towards the First World War. Using the complete and restored text of the Cambridge edition, this volume includes a new chronology and further reading by Paul Poplawski.
‘No one ever wrote better about the power struggles of sex and love’
Doris Lessing
‘A masterpiece’ Guardian
Edited by Michael Squires
With an introduction by Doris Lessing
* * *
www.penguin.com
D. H. LAWRENCE
* * *
PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE FOX/THE CAPTAIN’S DOLL/THE LADYBIRD
These three novellas show D. H. Lawrence’s brilliant and insightful evocation of human relationships – both tender and cruel – and the devastating results of war. In ‘The Fox’, two young women living on a small farm during the First World War find their solitary life interrupted. As a fox preys on their poultry, a human predator has the women in his sights. ‘The Captain’s Doll’ explores the complex relationship between a German countess and a married Scottish soldier in occupied Germany, while in ‘The Ladybird’, a wounded prisoner of war has a disturbing influence on the Englishwoman who visits him in hospital.
In her introduction, Helen Dunmore discusses the profound effect the First World War had on Lawrence’s writing.
Using the restored texts of the Cambridge edition, this volume includes a new chronology and further reading by Paul Poplawski.
‘As wonderful to read as they are disturbing … Lawrence’s prose is breath-taking’ Helen Dunmore
‘A marvellous writer … bold and witty’ Claire Tomalin
Edited by Dieter Mehl
With an introduction by Helen Dunmore
* * *
www.penguin.com
GEORGE AND WEEDON GROSSMITH
* * *
PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE DIARY OF A NOBODY
‘I fail to see – because I do not happen to be a “Somebody” – why my diary should not be interesting’
Mr Pooter is a man of modest ambitions, content with his ordinary life. Yet he always seems to be troubled by disagreeable tradesmen, impertinent young office clerks and wayward friends, not to mention his devil-may-care son Lupin’s unsuitable choice of bride. Try as he might, he cannot avoid life’s embarrassing mishaps. In the bumbling, absurd yet ultimately endearing figure of Pooter, the Grossmiths created an immortal comic character and a superb satire on the snobberies of middle-class suburbia – one which also sends up late Victorian crazes for Aestheticism, spiritualism and bicycling, as well as the fashion for publishing diaries by anybody and everybody.
Selected Stories Page 41