D. H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, on 11 September 1885. The son of coal miner Arthur Lawrence and his wife Lydia, a former teacher, David Herbert Lawrence grew up in a community dominated by the mining industry.

That background shaped his writing. Lawrence worked briefly as a teacher before establishing himself as a writer of novels, short stories, poetry, essays and travel writing. His early novel Sons and Lovers drew heavily on the family and industrial world in which he had grown up.

His later novels included The Rainbow and Women in Love. Lawrence’s treatment of relationships, sexuality and individual freedom repeatedly brought him into conflict with publishers and authorities. Britain prosecuted The Rainbow for obscenity in 1915, and copies were seized and destroyed.

Lawrence and his wife Frieda spent much of his later life travelling and living outside Britain. His health had long been poor, and tuberculosis increasingly restricted him during the 1920s.

He died at Vence in France on 2 March 1930, aged 44. His reputation remained disputed at his death, although his novels, poetry and other writing later secured a substantial place in twentieth-century English literature.