D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) was a novelist, poet, playwright, painter, critic and an icon of 20th-century literature. He began writing at an early age, publishing his first novel, The White Peacock, when he was twenty-five, Sons and Lovers two years later and The Rainbow and Women in Love in his thirties. His hatred of militarism, openly expressed during the First World War, stirred a wave of vilification that forced him to leave England and embark on what he called his 'Savage Pilgrimage'.

He spent the remainder of his life traveling - to Italy, Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), Australia, America, Mexico and the South of France - and it was during this time that he wrote such classics as Sea and Sardinia, The Plumed Serpent and Lady Chatterley's Lover.

With the exception of E.M. Forster, who called him 'the greatest novelist of our generation', and friends such as Aldous Huxley, Lawrence's obituarists were mostly dismissive or hostile. It was not until the Lady Chatterley trial thirty years after his death and the subsequent publication of the book that Lawrence was finally recognised as one of the greatest writers and thinkers of his age.