ABSTRACT
During the twenty or so years of his writing career Lawrence turned his hand to virtually every available literary form. Novels, short stories, poetry, plays, essays, travel books and reviews poured out from his prolific pen in a flood that ceased only with his death. In addition he was to the end an indefatigable letter writer and his letters rank with those of Keats and Hopkins as among the greatest in English. But Lawrence was and is clearly more, both in his own view and that of his readers then and now, than merely a literary man. There were other literary figures as celebrated as himself, some even more so — Bennett, Wells, Galsworthy, Kipling and others. But famous and widely read though they were (and some still are) none of them had the impact on their age and ours that Lawrence had. There is ample testimony to the sense of personal loss that people in many walks of life, some of whom had never set eyes on him, felt at his death. The words of the historian A. L. Rowse embody the feelings of innumerable others: ‘D. H. Lawrence meant something special to the men of my generation: he was an essential part in our awakening to maturity. We saw something of life through his eyes: his mode of experience intimately affected ours.’ And today, fifty years after Lawrence's death, later generations can echo Rowse's words: ‘He was a part of me: he had entered into my veins at a very vulnerable moment, of adolescence changing into maturity. He was entwined in the fibres of my mind and heart….’
