ABSTRACT
In early June of 1913, having finished the initial draft of “The Sisters,” which would eventually become the two novels The Rainbow and Women in Love, Lawrence turned again to writing short fiction. The immediate results were: “Honour and Arms,” eventually retitled “The Prussian Officer”; “Vin Ordinaire,” retitled later “The Thorn in the Flesh”; and “Eve and Old Adam,” which would become “New Eve and Old Adam” (Worthen 1983, xii). Lawrence composed his renowned story about a German officer and his orderly at one sitting while in Germany (Delavenay 1972, 196). In a June 10 letter posted from Irschenhausen, Oberbayern, to Edward Garnett, his literary advisor, Lawrence excitedly referred to “the best short story I have ever done” (Boulton 1981, 21).
