And yet here I am declaring this an epic masterpiece. My Everyman’s Library edition of The Rainbow weighs in at 460 pages, a rather modest number to achieve such a distinction as epic. When I think of epic masterpieces, I think of something of Tolstoyian length, an 800 to 1200 page monster that will consume your life for a month or two. ‘I thought it was the one thing which is an end in itself.’” ‘It isn’t supposed to lead anywhere, is it?’ said Dorothy, satirically. Love-love-what does it mean-what does it amount to? So much personal gratification. ‘Then what do you care about?’ she asked, exasperated. What is it to me?’Īnd she shrugged her shoulders in fierce, angry contempt.ĭorothy pondered, rather angry and afraid. I don’t care whether I love or whether I don’t, whether I have love or whether I haven’t. And I shall never love anybody else the same again. ‘I love him well enough-certainly more than I love anybody else in the world.

‘It isn’t a question of loving him,’ said Ursula. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical 'great tradition' of the English novel.

Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as 'the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.' Later, the influential Cambridge critic F.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his 'savage pilgrimage.' At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters.

The rainbow 1915