The Rainbow

1915. Controversial English novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist, Lawrence is known for his frequently misunderstood, but basically idealistic theories about sexual relations and for his interest in primitive religions and nature mysticism. Lawrence regarded sex, the primitive subconscious, and nature as cures for what he considered modern man's maladjustment to industrial society. His philosophy, life history and prejudices are inextricably entwined in his writings. Lawrence's fourth novel, The Rainbow, was about two sisters growing up in the north of England. The book begins: The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire. Two miles away, a church-tower stood on a hill, the houses of the country town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwens in the fields lifted his head from his work, he saw the church-tower at Ilkeston in the empty sky. So that as he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware of something standing above him and beyond him in the distance. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.