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1885-1930
Novelist and poet. He was born and grew up in the East Midlands of England, but a significant connection with the West Midlands is recorded below. David Herbert Lawrence was born at Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the son of a coal miner. His mother had been a schoolteacher and had aspirations to a more genteel and cultural existence. This background was of profound significance in the development of David, in both his life and his art. Much of his adult life was spent abroad, partly for his health but also following persecution for both his writing and his marriage to German-born Frieda Weekly.
Lawrence and Frieda returned to Europe from America in December 1923 for a three month stay. In the first week of January 1924 Lawrence travelled to Pontesbury, Shropshire, (while Frieda remained in London) to visit his friend Frederick Carter who was a mystic, painter and writer. He stayed for a few days and, during this time, presumably got to explore some of the local countryside including the bleak Stiperstones range topped by the Devil's Chair which had already been an influential symbol and setting for Mary Webb in her novel The golden arrow (1916). While in Pontesbury he saw a magnificent bay stallion which provided him with the major symbol for the short novel which ensued. In fact Lawrence's brief stay in Shropshire proved to be one of the few highlights of his time in England for he and Frieda returned to their New Mexico ranch disillusioned at the dreariness of the country and its people.
Soon after their return he began to write St. Mawr (1925) and in doing so vented his exasperation and anger at the effects of industrialism and, especially, at what he considered to be the parasites of society feeding off it. St. Mawr of course is his fictionalised version of the bay stallion he had seen, a typical Lawrence symbol, beautiful dangerous, full of power and passion. As setting for this story Lawrence used Pontesbury and the Stiperstones for the most significant scenes and indeed the setting is a vital element in the novel. The central scene of this short but intense novel takes place beneath the Devil's Chair when the stallion, with whom Lawrence so obviously sympathises as symbolic of life as it should be, first violently throws the pseudo artist Rico and then kicks the young blond Englishman, Edwards, in the face. One or two Pontesbury people featured in the novel including Frederick Carter as Cartwright.
Although Lawrence's stay in Shropshire was only a matter of days it nevertheless led to a most significant literary creation. He is not a writer one would immediately associate with Shropshire but in St. Mawr he seems to have sensed and evoked the essence of the place instinctively:
They came at last, trotting in file along a narrow track between heather, along the saddle of a hill, to where the knot of pale granite suddenly cropped out. It was one of those places where the spirit of aboriginal England still lingers, the old savage England, whose last blood flows still in a few Englishmen, Welshmen, Cornishmen. The rocks, whitish with weather of all the ages, jutted against the blue August sky, heavy with age-moulded roundnesses.
Adapted from An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire by Gordon Dickins, published by Shropshire Libraries, 1987. © Gordon Dickins, 1987.
Lady Chatterley's lover (1928)
Love poems and other (1913)
The rainbow (1915)
St. Mawr with The princess (1925)
Sons and lovers (1913)
Women in love (1920)
You may read the Stiperstones sequence from St. Mawr online here.
The Literary Encyclopedia has a profile of D.H. Lawrence by Ivan Phillips, University of Hertfordshire.
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 7 April 2005
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