D. H. Lawrence was one of the most original and controversial English writers of the twentieth century, a novelist, poet, and essayist whose frank exploration of sexuality, instinct, and human relationships both scandalized and transformed modern literature. Born in the mining town of Eastwood in Nottinghamshire, the son of a coal miner and a former schoolteacher, he drew deeply on his working-class origins and the tensions of his parents' marriage.
After working as a teacher, Lawrence committed himself to writing and produced a remarkable body of fiction. His early novel Sons and Lovers, a vivid, autobiographical study of a young man's bond with his mother, established his reputation, and he went on to write the major novels The Rainbow and Women in Love, which explored love, desire, and the inner lives of his characters with unprecedented intensity.
His career was dogged by censorship and scandal. The Rainbow was suppressed as obscene, and his work was repeatedly attacked for its sexual frankness. During the First World War he and his German-born wife, Frieda, were persecuted as suspected spies, embittering him against English society.
Restless and often ill with the tuberculosis that would kill him, Lawrence spent his later years wandering — through Italy, Australia, Mexico, and the American Southwest — in search of a more vital way of living. His final novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, with its explicit treatment of an adulterous affair, was banned for decades. He died in France in 1930.