Sons and Lovers »

Pensive and insightful, D. H. Lawrence brought to his work a frankness that had been missing from early 20th-century fiction. Though novels such as Lady Chatterly's Lover, Sons and Lovers, and others incited controversy and censorship for their sexual content, Lawrence was not being prurient; he was simply trying to describe the world around him, in both his fiction and his many letters and essays.

This is the first critical study of Sons and Lovers to engage with the new Cambridge edition, which prints for the first time the whole text that Lawrence wrote.

New York Times Book Review

There is probably no phrase much more hackneyed than that of 'human document,' het it is the only one which at all describes this very unusual book. . . . Although this is a novel of over 500 closely printed pages the style is terse -- so terse that at times it produces an effect as of short, sharp hammer strokes. Yet it is flexible, too, as shown by its success in depicting varying shades of mood, in expressing those more intimate emotions which are so very nearly inexpressible. -- Book of the Century; New York Times review, September 1913