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Sons and Lovers
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Sons and Lovers Library binding - 1982

by D. H. Lawrence


About this book

Though it is the author’s third novel, Sons and Lovers is often regarded as D.H. Lawrence’s masterpiece. The autobiographical work, which was originally titled Paul Morel after its protagonist, was set in motion with the death of Lawrence’s mother, Lydia. The author used the opportunity to reexamine his childhood, his relationship with his mother, and her psychological effect on his sexuality.

Sons and Lovers had already been rejected by one publisher when Lawrence sent the manuscript to Edward Garnett of Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd. Garnett made extensive editing suggestions and still — after Lawrence rewrote the manuscript for the fourth time — cut 80 passages, about 10% of the work, before its 1913 publication.

At the time of publication, Sons and Lovers was criticized for being obscene. But the novel endured. It has been adapted for film multiple times, including the Academy Award winning 1960 film. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.

From the publisher

Lawrence's first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long. When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children's lives. Their second son, Paul, craves the warmth of family and community, but knows that he must sacrifice everything in the struggle for independence if he is not to repeat his parents' failure. Lawrence's powerful description of Paul's single-minded efforts to define himself sexually and emotionally through relationships with two women -- the innocent, old-fashioned Miriam Leivers and the experienced, provocatively modern Clara Dawes -- makes this a novel as much for the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was for the beginning of the twentieth.

First Edition Identification

Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd. first published Sons and Lovers in the UK in 1913. First editions have dark blue binding, gold lettering stamped on the upper cover and spine, and a 20-page segment of publisher's advertisements at the end. There are at least two or three issues of the first edition: copies have been noted both with the bound-in title without date and with the tipped-in title with the date on the copyright page.

Details

  • Title Sons and Lovers
  • Author D. H. Lawrence
  • Binding Library Binding
  • Pages 420
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Buccaneer Books
  • Date 1982-06
  • ISBN 9780899664002 / 0899664008
  • Weight 1.42 lbs (0.64 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.72 x 5.77 x 1.15 in (22.15 x 14.66 x 2.92 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects England, Autobiographical fiction
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC
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Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers

by D. H. Lawrence

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ISBN 13
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Sons and Lovers
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Sons and Lovers

by D. H. Lawrence

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  • Hardcover
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Binding
Hardcover
ISBN 13
9780899664002
ISBN 10
0899664008
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Buccaneer Books, 1982-06. Hardcover. Good.
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