50 Fun Facts About D. H. Lawrence

What did the initials D. H. stand for in D. H. Lawrence's name?

He was born on 11 September 1885 and died on 2 March 1930, aged 44.

Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood, a mining town in which English county?

His birthplace is now a museum, and a painted 'Blue Line Trail' links three of his childhood homes.

What was the occupation of Lawrence's father, Arthur?

His mother Lydia had trained for the classroom; the gap between them shaped Sons and Lovers.

Lawrence became the first local pupil to win a county council scholarship to which institution in 1898?

He left in 1901 and briefly worked as a clerk in a surgical-appliance factory before pneumonia ended that job.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Lawrence worked in which profession, including a spell in Croydon?

He earned a teaching certificate from University College, Nottingham, in 1908.

Which Haggs Farm friend sent Lawrence's early poems to Ford Madox Ford and inspired 'Miriam'?

Ford, then editing The English Review, gave Lawrence his first real break.

What was the title of Lawrence's first novel, published in 1911?

Its working title was Laetitia; it is set in Nethermere, a fictionalised Eastwood.

In March 1912 Lawrence met the woman he would spend the rest of his life with; who was she?

Six years his senior and married to his former professor Ernest Weekley, she left her three children to elope with him.

Frieda's husband Ernest Weekley had taught Lawrence which subject at University College, Nottingham?

She was six years older than Lawrence and the mother of three young children.

Frieda Lawrence was born into which German noble family?

She was born in Metz in 1879 and later married Lawrence on 13 July 1914, weeks before the war.

Soon after eloping to Germany in 1912, Lawrence was briefly arrested near Metz as a suspected what?

Frieda's father, an army officer, intervened to get him released.

Sons and Lovers (1913) centres on which young man torn between his mother and two lovers?

The Modern Library ranked it ninth among the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Which publisher's reader became Lawrence's mentor and trimmed Sons and Lovers before publication?

His son David Garnett also became a valued friend of the novelist.

The Rainbow (1915) follows three generations of which Midlands farming family?

It focuses on Ursula, whose story continues in Women in Love.

What happened to The Rainbow after its 1915 obscenity prosecution at Bow Street Magistrates' Court?

The novel stayed unavailable in Britain for eleven years, though American editions circulated.

Lawrence originally conceived The Rainbow and Women in Love as a single work under which title?

He also considered calling it The Wedding Ring before publishing them separately.

In Women in Love, Gudrun Brangwen is paired with which industrialist?

The novel ends in the snows of the Tyrolean Alps and was first published in New York in 1920.

Who won the Best Actress Oscar for Ken Russell's 1969 film of Women in Love?

The film's nude fireside wrestling scene was a landmark for mainstream cinema.

Which two actors wrestle naked in front of a fire in the 1969 film Women in Love?

It was one of the first American theatrical releases to show male genitals.

Accused of signalling to German submarines, the Lawrences were expelled from which county in 1917?

They had been living at Zennor; he described the persecution in the 'Nightmare' chapter of Kangaroo.

Lawrence wrote his 1923 novel Kangaroo during a stay in Thirroul, a coastal town in which country?

It explores fringe politics in Sydney and his wartime persecution in England.

With whom did Lawrence co-write the novel The Boy in the Bush during a stay near Perth?

He met the local writer while briefly living in Darlington, near Perth.

Which socialite invited the Lawrences to Taos and gave them the only property they ever owned?

Frieda repaid the gift with the manuscript of one of his best-known novels.

What did Frieda give in return for the Taos ranch a wealthy patron offered the couple in 1924?

It was the manuscript of Sons and Lovers; Frieda later left the ranch to the University of New Mexico.

Which 1926 novel, set in Mexico, imagines a revival of the cult of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl?

It grew out of the couple's long stays at Lake Chapala and Oaxaca.

What did D. H. Lawrence's 1923 book Studies in Classic American Literature examine?

He rewrote it while living in the United States.

For which 1920 novel did Lawrence win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction?

It was written mostly in Italy after the couple fled Britain in 1919.

Sea and Sardinia describes a brief journey Lawrence made in which year?

His other travel books are Twilight in Italy, Mornings in Mexico and Etruscan Places.

Lawrence's best-known poem, 'Snake', appears in which 1923 collection?

The same volume contains his sequence of Tortoise poems.

'Bavarian Gentians' and 'The Ship of Death' are among Lawrence's most famous poems on what subject?

They were written as illness closed in on him in his final years.

In Lawrence's 'The Rocking-Horse Winner', how does Paul divine the names of winning racehorses?

He wins on Malabar at fourteen to one and dies the next night; the story first ran in Harper's Bazaar in 1926.

Lawrence's short work The Escaped Cock, also published as The Man Who Died, retells what?

It was written in his last years, alongside Apocalypse, his commentary on the Book of Revelation.

Movements in European History, a school textbook Lawrence wrote for money, was published under what?

His name was too notorious after The Rainbow ban to sell a schoolbook.

Where was the first unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover printed in July 1928?

The small publisher Giuseppe 'Pino' Orioli ran off 1,000 copies; a Paris edition followed in 1929.

In Lady Chatterley's Lover, why is Sir Clifford Chatterley confined to a wheelchair?

His wife Constance begins an affair with an employee on the estate.

What is the occupation of Oliver Mellors, Lady Chatterley's lover?

He is a former army officer who has retreated to the woods of the Wragby estate.

What alternative title, referring to the male and female sex organs, did Lawrence consider for his last novel?

Ken Russell's 1993 BBC serial drew on the longer second version of the novel that carries that name.

Which publisher was acquitted at the Old Bailey in 1960 over the full text of Lady Chatterley's Lover?

The trial was a test of the new Obscene Publications Act of 1959.

At the 1960 trial, Mervyn Griffith-Jones asked whether it was a book you would wish whom to read?

The line came to symbolise how out of touch the establishment was with post-war Britain.

How many defence witnesses vouched for the book at the 1960 Lady Chatterley trial?

They included E. M. Forster, Richard Hoggart and the Bishop of Woolwich; the jury took three hours to acquit.

How many copies of Penguin's Lady Chatterley's Lover sold on its first day, 10 November 1960?

Three million copies went quickly; the book had also been banned in the US, Canada, India and Japan.

What happened when Lawrence's paintings were exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London in 1929?

Confiscated works included Boccaccio Story and Contadini; the largest collection is now at a hotel in Taos.

Lawrence died on 2 March 1930 in Vence, in the south of France, of complications from which disease?

He had suffered a near-fatal attack of malaria and tuberculosis in Mexico in 1925.

What emblem did Lawrence adopt, later set in mosaic on his headstone by Frieda?

His body was exhumed and cremated in 1935 so the ashes could be taken to New Mexico.

By one account, what did Angelo Ravagli do with Lawrence's ashes rather than pay tax to ship the urn to America?

Officially the ashes are mixed into the concrete of the memorial at the Taos ranch; Ravagli later married Frieda.

Which friend edited the first collection of Lawrence's letters, published posthumously?

He had visited Lawrence in New Mexico and was especially close to him in his final Italian years.

Which philosopher, once a friend, later called Lawrence a 'proto-German Fascist'?

Lawrence's 1915 letters to him opposed enfranchising the working class and disparaged the French Revolution.

Which feminist critic attacked Lawrence's sexual politics, arguing his women mouth a creed of male supremacy?

F. R. Leavis, by contrast, championed his moral seriousness and artistic integrity.

Who played the miner father Walter Morel in the Oscar-winning 1960 film of Sons and Lovers?

Directed by Jack Cardiff, it won the Oscar for black-and-white cinematography and was nominated for Best Picture.

Who played Constance in the 2022 Netflix film of Lady Chatterley's Lover?

Jack O'Connell played Mellors; earlier screen Connies include Sylvia Kristel and Joely Richardson.