General Chat

My friend said, that mostly she had found the people that had enjoyed most are the ones that dont often read books.

hi all
for those of you who have read the second book

is it worth reading
as i said i am more horror book reader
does it turn out to be a love story
lorraine

Lorriane no it isnt , and yes it turns out to be a love story bit more story no twists and a happy ending :-D

Morning Julia - I agree with you. If AnnCardiff was shocked, I certainly would be ;-) :-D

thanks hayley
dont think i will bother with the other 2 then
i will go back to my books

lorraine

i never bought into the hype, i dont like fiction books, n i certainly dont do mills n boom sexed up lol,


i somtimes think im the only person who hasnt read t hahahah

certainly not shocked - I was looking for a bit of steamy sex - but that was not the right kind with Mr Gray - not for me anyway

Much prefer Lady Chatterley' Lover - far more erotic!!!

Lady Chatterly, now you are talking. It is set not far from where I live. In fact, the next town on from me is where D.H. Lawrence comes from, and when I go shopping there, I pass his house.

Julia in Derbyshire

Lady Chatterlys Lover - now that is a steamy book - superbly written and hot!!!!

The other book - trash.

As said before, all those I know that have read it, are those who rarely if ever read a book.

I must be an exception to the rule then because I'm an avid reader of all different sorts of books lol x

nope i dont read fiction
also i have my own dirty mind so dont feel the need to read it :-D

Me too what I meant was the people that have been overjoyed are people that dont often read...most of us thought it was overrated, not for one min am I queen of litercy but I do enjoy a good book, I have even really enjoyed a couple of Martine Coles first novels big fan of of Tess Gerriston but I have never read a classic or Dan Brown.

Hayley, I have read just about every book by Tess Gerritson (sp), but never read Dan Brown or Martine Cole

Julia in Derbyshire

Julia - I was just about to post 'Now you're talking' re Lady C, but you beat me to it LOL

I wonder if D H Lawrence had a hen-house and raised chicks in his back
garden ;-)

Wend (feeling faint)

Back garden Wend.!!!!! He would have been so lucky. We're talking coal miners terraced houses here. Smaller than those on Corrie. Only thing in the back yard was the outside cludgie. LOLOL

Julia in Derbyshire

All in his mind then :-D

Wend - Yup.

Julia in Derbyshire

Women in Love is another steamy novel by Lawrence..... And the film whew

Have read most of Lawrence's books - think that although he was a great writer he was a bit frustrated!!!!

But did he not have a wife and a lover? can someone enlighten me?

started reading a Tess Gerritson book on holiday - frightened the tripe out of me!!! couldn't finish it



Early careerIn the autumn of 1908 the newly qualified Lawrence left his childhood home for London. While teaching in Davidson Road School, Croydon, he continued writing. Some of the early poetry, submitted by Jessie Chambers, came to the attention of Ford Madox Ford, then known as Ford Hermann Hueffer and editor of the influential The English Review. Hueffer then commissioned the story Odour of Chrysanthemums which, when published in that magazine, encouraged Heinemann, a London publisher, to ask Lawrence for more work. His career as a professional author now began in earnest, although he taught for a further year. Shortly after the final proofs of his first published novel The White Peacock appeared in 1910, Lawrence's mother died. She had been ill with cancer. The young man was devastated and he was to describe the next few months as his "sick year." It is clear that Lawrence had an extremely close relationship with his mother and his grief following her death became a major turning point in his life, just as the death of Mrs. Morel forms a major turning point in his autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers, a work that draws upon much of the writer's provincial upbringing.

In March 1912 Lawrence met Frieda Weekley (née von Richthofen), with whom he was to share the rest of his life. She was six years older than her new lover, married to Lawrence's former modern languages professor from University College, Nottingham, Ernest Weekley, and with three young children. She eloped with Lawrence to her parents' home in Metz, a garrison town then in Germany near the disputed border with France. Their stay here included Lawrence's first brush with militarism, when he was arrested and accused of being a British spy, before being released following an intervention from Frieda Weekley's father. After this encounter Lawrence left for a small hamlet to the south of Munich, where he was joined by Weekley for their "honeymoon", later memorialised in the series of love poems titled Look! We Have Come Through (1917). 1912 also saw the first of Lawrence's so-called "mining plays", The Daughter-in-Law, written in Nottingham dialect. The play was never to be performed, or even published, in Lawrence's lifetime.

From Germany they walked southwards across the Alps to Italy, a journey that was recorded in the first of his travel books, a collection of linked essays titled Twilight in Italy and the unfinished novel, Mr Noon. During his stay in Italy, Lawrence completed the final version of Sons and Lovers that, when published in 1913, was acknowledged to represent a vivid portrait of the realities of working class provincial life. Lawrence though, had become so tired of the work that he allowed Edward Garnett to cut about a hundred pages from the text.

Lawrence and Frieda returned to England in 1913 for a short visit. At this time, he now encountered and befriended critic John Middleton Murry and New Zealand-born short story writer Katherine Mansfield. Lawrence was able to meet with Welsh tramp poet W. H. Davies whose work, much of which was inspired by nature, he much admired. Davies had begun to collect autographs and was particularly keen to obtain Lawrence's. Georgian poetry publisher Edward Marsh was able to secure an autograph (probably as part of a signed poem) and also invited Lawrence and Frieda to meet Davies in London on 28 July, under his supervision. Lawrence was immediately captivated by the poet and later invited Davies to join Frieda and him in Germany. Despite his early enthusiasm for Davies' work, however, Lawrence's opinion changed after reading Foliage and he commented after reading Nature Poems in Italy that they seemed ".. so thin, one can hardly feel them".[6]

Lawrence and Weekley soon went back to Italy, staying in a cottage in Fiascherino on the Gulf of Spezia. Here he started writing the first draft of a work of fiction that was to be transformed into two of his better-known novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love. While writing Women in Love in Cornwall during 1916–17, Lawrence developed a strong and possibly romantic relationship with a Cornish farmer named William Henry Hocking.[7] Although it is not absolutely clear if their relationship was sexual, Lawrence's wife, Frieda Weekley, said she believed it was. Lawrence's fascination with themes of homosexuality could also be related to his own sexual orientation. This theme is also overtly manifested in Women in Love. Indeed, in a letter written during 1913, he writes, "I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not..."[8] He is also quoted as saying, "I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16."[9]

Eventually, Weekley obtained her divorce. The couple returned to England shortly before the outbreak of World War I and were married on 13 July 1914. In this time, Lawrence worked with London intellectuals and writers such as Dora Marsden and the people involved with The Egoist (T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and others). The Egoist, an important Modernist literary magazine, published some of his work. He was also reading and adapting Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto.[10] He also met at this time the young Jewish artist Mark Gertler, and they became for a time good friends; Lawrence would describe Gertler's 1916 anti-war painting, 'The Merry-Go-Round' as 'the best modern picture I have seen: I think it is great and true.'[11] Gertler would inspire the character Loerke (a sculptor) in Women in Love. Weekley's German parentage and Lawrence's open contempt for militarism meant that they were viewed with suspicion in wartime England and lived in near destitution. The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed after an investigation into its alleged obscenity in 1915. Later, they were accused of spying and signalling to German submarines off the coast of Cornwall where they lived at Zennor. During this period he finished Women in Love. In it Lawrence explores the destructive features of contemporary civilization through the evolving relationships of four major characters as they reflect upon the value of the arts, politics, economics, sexual experience, friendship and marriage. This book is a bleak, bitter vision of humanity and proved impossible to publish in wartime conditions. Not published until 1920, it is now widely recognised as an English novel of great dramatic force and intellectual subtlety.

In late 1917, after constant harassment by the armed forces authorities, Lawrence was forced to leave Cornwall at three days' notice under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). This persecution was later described in an autobiographical chapter of his Australian novel Kangaroo, published in 1923. He spent some months in early 1918 in the small, rural village of Hermitage near Newbury, Berkshire. He then lived for just under a year (mid-1918 to early 1919) at Mountain Cottage, Middleton-by-Wirksworth, Derbyshire, where he wrote one of his most poetic short stories, The Wintry Peacock. Until 1919 he was compelled by poverty to shift from address to address and barely survived a severe attack of influenza.