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David Herbert (D. H.) Lawrence is one of the most versatile and influential figures in the 20th-century literary canon. Best known for his novels, Lawrence was also an accomplished poet, short story writer, essayist, critic, and travel writer. The controversial themes for which he is remembered‹namely the celebration of sensuality in an over-intellectualized world‹and his relationship with censors sometimes overshadow the work of a master craftsman and profound thinker. Lawrence was born on Sept. 11, 1885, in the small coal-mining village of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in central England. Lawrence's father, Arthur, was a miner, and the mining boom of the 1870s had taken the family around Nottinghamshire. By the time Bert (as Lawrence was known), the family's fourth child, was born, the family had settled in Eastwood for good. Lawrence's mother, Lydia Beardsall, an intellectually ambitious woman disillusioned with her husband's dead-end job and irresponsible drinking habits, encouraged her children to advance beyond their restrictive environment. Bert, a sickly, bookish child, won a scholarship to Nottingham High School in 1898.
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