Central Skagit Library District

The Man Who Was Through With the World' picks up the same themes as in Lawrence's short story 'The Man Who Loved Islands'. He asks if we can ever withdraw from the world, no matter how much it disgusts us. The ironic part of this fragment is that the hermit vainly seeks to think holy thoughts while all around him is the natural world which could provide his life with meaning. The fragment is unfinished leaving the reader to wonder if the hero would...

A Modern Lover' was written by D H Lawrence in 1909. A young man returns home to his first love to declare his feelings for her, but the moment is lost when the girl will not give herself sexually. This theme was to be explored fully in Lawrence's novel, 'Sons and Lovers'

Odour of Chrysanthemums' was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. He reworked the story in the play, 'The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd' but in this short story version, Lawrence sees the tragic episode through the eyes of the wife. The theme of a loveless marriage, redeemed by death is one which Lawrence was to come back to in other stories....

Lawrence uses the story of a storm and the deaths it causes to revive the feelings for (if not an actual belief in) the old gods, in this case Mercury whose shrine is ignored by the tourists but who takes his revenge.

In 'Strike Pay', Lawrence returns to the scenes of his boyhood in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire. A group of miners, liberated from work by a strike, enjoy a day out but the hard realities of home life and mothers-in-law await their return. Tinged with good humour and the sense of comradeship among the miners and finally between the miner and his wife, this story epitomises working life before the Great War.

The Christening' was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The theme of the unmarried mother, and the frictions the situation caused in the family and in the local community were further explored in his play 'The Daughter-in-Law'. In this story, the emphasis moves around each member of the family and the visiting clergyman as the tensions...

Lawrence wrote three drafts of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' between 1926 and 1928: 'The First Lady Chatterley's Lover', this audio book, 'John Thomas and Lady Jane' and the final version, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. All three books are published as ebooks and paperbacks by the Blackthorn Press. Although all three books have the same story line of an aristocratic woman falling in love with a working-class man, there are differences in their tone and sensibilities....

The Shadow in the Rose Garden'. Lawrence is often accused of misogyny and this story used as evidence against him. There is the simple but honest mine worker, who has taken on a wife who is 'above' him but who is struggling to understand her and her feelings for him. Slowly, the story unravels the woman's past. The reader cannot be entirely unsympathetic to her plight, Lawrence is too good a writer to let that happen, but her dishonesty has probably...

The Last Laugh' is another of Lawrence's supernatural stories, set in a dreamlike snowy London. The question left open is who the three people in the story saw on the snowy evening. Perhaps Pan, returned to destroy the Christian God, as the church is destroyed in the story and to bring love to the frigid young woman in the form of a policeman who is prevented from leaving the house. But why the other quite harmless, and Platonic lover, had to die...

The Mortal Coil' is one of Lawrence's darker stories. From adversity the lovers find a kind of happiness in each other only for death to snatch it away.