Son And Lover

Lawrence's growth to maturity was a painful and traumatic business, the impulses of the young lover constantly thwarted by the self-doubt of the mother's son. Philip Callow captures the extraordinary drama of Lawrence's life from 1885, the year of his birth, to 1919 when he quit England. In rich and intimate detail, Mr. Callow recreates the half-rural, half-industrial world of the English Midlands where Lawrence grew up and which haunted his imagination all his life; he traces Lawrence's relationships with women, particularly his dominating mother, his first love Jessie Chambers, and earthy Frieda, his partner in a stormy marriage. And he shows how Lawrence was able to transmute the contradictions of his personality into the stuff of art. "A surprising tale of metamorphosis which Mr. Callow re-creates better than any previous Lawrence biographer."—Julian Moynihan. "A happy balance of insight and sympathy.... His achievement is to let us see [Lawrence's] impulses and passions from the inside."—Margaret Drabble.

A skillful biography focusing on D. H. Lawrence's developing consciousness during his childhood and youth in the English Midlands, his university days, his elopement with Frieda, and his departure from England in 1919. A surprising tale of metamorphosis which Mr. Callow recreates better than any previous Lawrence biographer. —Julian Moynihan

Philip Callow follows this biography of Lawrence's early years with Body of Truth. Mr. Callow, himself a novelist, poet, and biographer, has also written lives of Chekhov, Cézanne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, and Van Gogh, all published to critical acclaim. Mr. Callow lives and writes in England.