Showing results by author "D H Lawrence" in All Categories

The British Classics Collection: Volume One is a century-spanning collection of 24 classic works of fiction and poetry by British authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Stephen Fry, Joanne Froggatt, Jason Isaacs, Adjoa Andoh, and many more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Charles Dickens; Emily Brontë; Jane Austen; Thomas Hardy; George Eliot; D.H. Lawrence; George Orwell; and Mary Shelley, amongst a host of others.

Sons and Lovers, Lawrence's third published novel, was written by the author at the height of his literary powers. The story of class differences (the relationship between a middle-class woman and a miner) in the tough world of coal mining brought a refreshing realism to literature. It remains a challenging text and is studied widely. It is particularly effective on audiobook in the hands of Nottinghamshire reader Paul Slack.

Set in the rural midlands of England, The Rainbow revolves around three generations of Brangwens, a family deeply involved with the land and noted for their strength and vigour. When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. Their stories continue in Women in Love.

Kangaroo is a politically charged novel exploring post-World War I Australia through the eyes of British journalist Richard Lovat Somers. As he becomes entangled in the ideologies of both fascists and socialists, he must navigate intrigue, espionage, and personal conflicts. A novel of identity, belonging, and the undercurrents of power.

In an Audible Exclusive performance, Holliday Grainger lends her voice to a new unabridged recording of Lady Chatterley's Lover, a novel that was banned until 1960 and is now considered to be one of the most renowned love stories of all time. This production features an exclusive introduction written and narrated by Fern Riddell, a cultural historian who specialises in sex in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence's first major novel, was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long. When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children's lives.

Paul Morel, caught between the suffocating love of his mother and the tumultuous relationships with the women in his life, struggles to define himself. As he grows, he is torn between devotion to his mother and his own desire for independence and passion. A raw, emotional exploration of human desires, repression, and the painful journey of becoming one's own person, Sons and Lovers reveals the complexities of the ties that bind us—and the cost of breaking free.

Crowned ‘the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation’ by EM Forster, DH Lawrence has an undisputed place in England's canon of great authors. In this wide-ranging collection, dramatisations and readings of some of his major works are brought together, exploring themes such as romantic love and sexual desire, individual freedom, class division, war, the beauty of nature and the ugliness of industrialisation.

The story of Lady Chatterley and her love for her husband's gamekeeper outraged the sensibilities of Edwardian England. Lawrence had already been dismissed as a purveyor of the obscene for the attitudes to sex that he had shown in The Rainbow, which had been fiercely suppressed on its publication in 1915. Chatterley, written in several versions around 1928 in Italy in the final part of Lawrence's life, was a deliberate choice on the author's part to address sex head on.

Constance Chatterley seeks to escape from the confines of a loveless marriage and the upper class surroundings that suffocate her. When she meets the gamekeeper of Chatterley mansion, Oliver Mellors, she is mesmerised and infatuated by his no-nonsense demeanour and passionate touch. The two soon forge a profound bond as a result of their sexual compatibility and sociopolitical views.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is D. H. Lawrence's last novel. First published privately in 1928, Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned from wider publication in the UK until 1960 and was the subject of censorship and book banning in the United States and elsewhere. Its erotic subject material, colorful language, and discussion of interclass relations were deemed obscene.

D. H. Lawrence’s homage to his travels in Mexico and the American southwest. The first four essays are products of a short visit to Oaxaca in Mexico. The following three, which include Lawrence’s classic account of the Hopi snake dance, are set in New Mexico. In the last essay, Lawrence remembers Saint Catherine’s Day at the ranch in Taos from the vantage point of his new residence in Italy. All are written in an inimitable style which combines acute observation and sardonic humour with Lawrence’s often eccentric views on culture and philosophy.

Provocative and sensual, this is the story of one man torn between the love for his mother and his desire for two very different women. Sons and Lovers is a compelling exploration of sexual awakening and the clash of generations set in a Nottinghamshire mining town. Beloved and acclaimed star of screen and stage Sir Ian McKellen provides a thrilling reading, capturing the freshness and intensity of D.H. Lawrence’s writing.

Lawrence’s style is bold, intimate and inventive and he always has the capacity to shock. His great strength comes from the realism of the characters he portrays and the play on tension – first seen in the exchanges between Gertrude and Morel and continuing with Paul, his Mother and his two women – which never lets up. Then marvel at the depth and quality of the writing as the story moves relentlessly towards its conclusion.

Lawrence wrote The Plumed Serpent between 1923 to 1924, a time when he was in ill health, living in Mexico, and becoming dependent on his wife Frieda. The plot revolves around a movement to replace the Christian God with the old pre-conquest gods, such as Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent of the title.

Lawrence explores love, sex, passion, and marriage through the eyes of two sisters, Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen. Intelligent, incisive, and observant, the two very different sisters pursue thrilling, torrid affairs with their lovers, Rupert and Gerald, while searching for more mature emotional relationships. Against a haunting World War I backdrop of coal mines, factories, and a beleaguered working class, Gudrun and Ursula's temperamental differences spark an ongoing debate regarding their society and their inner lives.

The story of the physical relationship between the aristocratic protagonist Constance Chatterley and gamekeeper Oliver Mellors - which occurs right under the nose of her wheelchair-bound husband, Clifford. In exploring the class system of the early 20th century, the novel also touches upon the declining coal-mining industry, its effect on the workers, and the politics which surrounded it. Yet possibly the most important theme is the individual’s need for physical as well as intellectual satisfaction.

In post-war East Midlands, in a home dominated by their difficult grandmother and aunt, Yvette and Lucille are two sisters struggling to bring joy into their lives. Their mother, having run off in a scandal, leaves the two to suffer a dysfunctional family life and oppressive domesticity. But one day, Yvette meets a free-spirited gypsy and his family, awakening her sexual desires and compounding her disenchantment.

At the end of World War 1, D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda ("the queen bee"), exiled themselves from England and set up home in Sicily. On the spur of the moment, Lawrence proposed a short trip to Sardinia. Setting off before dawn, they embarked on a whirlwind tour, by train to Palermo, ferry to Cagliari, and by train and bus to Terranova, returning to Rome by ferry. Back in Sicily, Lawrence wrote Sea and Sardinia, one of the great travel journals of the 20th century, in six weeks and entirely from memory.

D. H. Lawrence's controversial classic, The Rainbow, follows the lives and loves of three generations of the Brangwen family between 1840 and 1905. Their tempestuous relationships are played out against a backdrop of change as they witness the arrival of industrialization - the only constant being their unending attempts to grasp a higher form of existence symbolized by the persistent, unifying motif of the "rainbow".