Revisiting Lawrence

I’M JUST reading some of D. H. Lawrence’s shorter fiction, a fat volume of which has sat on our bookshelves for nearly twenty years.

I’m familiar, of course, with some of Lawrence’s novels – indeed, I had to study Sons and Lovers for my A-Levels.

I’m also acquainted with a handful of his short stories, with Fanny and Annie being, in my view, in the top ten of the finest stories ever written in the English language and one that I personally found deeply influential on my own writing.

This is not to say that I’m an unadulterated fan of Lawrence’s work – at times he irritates me as much as he fills me with admiration.

But I suppose, on the whole, the latter emotion is uppermost in me as I read his dissection of German militarism in The Prussian Officer, or the conflict between love and class consciousness in Daughters of the Vicar.

But what has prompted this interest in a long-dead writer and poet? I’m certainly not planning to sit any more exams in English lit, while my literary aspirations have dried up in recent years.

No, maybe it’s because we visited Vence last year, the town in the south of France where Lawrence died.

Or maybe it’s simply because this big book of stories has sat there so long unread and if I’m ever going to revisit Lawrence's work, it’s time I did it.

Either way, it should keep me out of trouble for a while.