Editing Sons and Lovers (section)

==Development and publication history==

The third published novel of [[D. H. Lawrence]], taken by many to be his earliest masterpiece, tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and budding artist.

The original 1913 edition was heavily edited by [[Edward Garnett]] who removed 80 passages, roughly a tenth of the text.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Smith, Helen.|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1016045858|title=An uncommon reader : a life of edward garnett, mentor and editor of literary genius|date=2017|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux|isbn=978-0-374-71741-4|oclc=1016045858}}</ref> The novel is dedicated to Garnett. Garnett, as the literary advisor to the publishing firm Duckworth, was an important figure in leading Lawrence farther into the London literary world during the years 1911 and 1912.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=PATEMAN|first=JOHN|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1136964863|title=ORPINGTON TO ONTARIO 2019.|date=2020|publisher=LULU COM|isbn=978-1-7948-4199-4|pages=9|oclc=1136964863}}</ref> It was not until the 1992 [[The Cambridge Edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence|Cambridge University Press]] edition was released that the missing text was restored.<ref name=":0" />

Lawrence began working on the novel in the period of his mother's illness, and often expresses this sense of his mother's wasted life through his female protagonist Gertrude Morel. Letters written around the time of its development clearly demonstrate the admiration he felt for his mother – viewing her as a 'clever, ironical, delicately moulded woman' – and her apparently unfortunate marriage to his coal-miner father, a man of 'sanguine temperament' and instability. He believed that his mother had married below her class status. Unlike her husband, Lydia grew up in a middle class religious family, and the differences in their backgrounds often caused family conflicts. On one hand, Mr. Lawrence would spend his wages on drink after working for hours in the coal mine; on the other hand, Mrs. Lawrence focused on their children's upbringing, welfare, and education while also harboring a desire to open her own haberdashery shop.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Inspire |title=D H Lawrence's mother – Mrs Lydia Lawrence {{!}} Inspire |url=https://www.inspirepicturearchive.org.uk/image/26503/D_H_Lawrences_mother_-_Mrs_Lydia_Lawrence |access-date=2024-07-09 |website=inspirepicturearchive.org.uk}}</ref>{{Clarify|date=August 2010}} This personal family conflict experienced by Lawrence provided him with the impetus for the first half of his novel – in which both William, the older brother, and Paul Morel become increasingly contemptuous of their father – and the subsequent exploration of Paul Morel's antagonising relationships with both his lovers, which are both incessantly affected by his allegiance to his mother.

The first draft of Lawrence's novel is now lost and was never completed, which seems to be directly due to his mother's illness. He did not return to the novel for three months, at which point it was titled 'Paul Morel'. The penultimate draft of the novel coincided with a remarkable change in Lawrence's life, as his health was thrown into turmoil and he resigned his teaching job to spend time in Germany. This plan was never followed, however, as he met and married the German minor aristocrat, Frieda Weekley, who was the wife of a former professor of his at the [[University of Nottingham]]. According to Frieda's account of their first meeting, she and Lawrence talked about [[Oedipus]] and the effects of early childhood on later life within twenty minutes of meeting.

The third draft of 'Paul Morel' was sent to the publishing house [[Heinemann (publisher)|Heinemann]]; the response, a rather violent reaction, came from [[William Heinemann]] himself. His reaction captures the shock and newness of Lawrence's novel, 'the degradation of the mother [as explored in this novel], supposed to be of gentler birth, is almost inconceivable'; he encouraged Lawrence to redraft the novel one more time. In addition to altering the title to a more thematic 'Sons and Lovers', Heinemann's response had reinvigorated Lawrence into vehemently defending his novel and its themes as a coherent work of art. To justify its form, Lawrence explains, in letters to Garnett, that it is a 'great tragedy' and a 'great book', one that mirrors the 'tragedy of thousands of young men in England'.