David Lawrence

Glad Ghosts' is another of Lawrence's supernatural stories, set in the archetypical country house. He doesn't attempt to explain the supernatural happenings which occur but uses them to extol his own ideas of the power of the sex drive and the triumph of life over death.

A Fragment of Stained Glass was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence relates a story, supposedly from the Middle Ages, which tells of the possible triumph of love and the human spirit over the forces of religion, superstition and social injustice.

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 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.

The Prussian Officer'. There is an anti-militarism theme, unpopular as the nation drew near to war and an examination of latent homosexuality as the officer in the story struggles with his feelings for his orderly. The young soldier is driven beyond breaking point but finds a kind of redemption in his final return to natural surroundings and, symbolically, he finds equality in death with his tormentor as they are put side by side in the mortuary.

Goose Fair was written by D H Lawrence in 1910. Lawrence sets his story against the backdrop of the industrial troubles caused by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. A young woman is torn between her need for a lover and her contempt for what she perceives to be his dishonesty in the burning down of a mill. Is all love a compromise between the ideal and the reality of life?

Samson and Delilah' is set against a Cornish backdrop. Lawrence and his wife tried to settle in Cornwall during the First World War but were hounded by the authorities and forced to leave. Lawrence pointedly describes the local people as' mindless' in this story. It is almost a Homeric story of a husband returning home after a long absence, having to fight to regain his wife. But in this story it is the wife who is the obstacle. But she succumbs to...

The Border Line' is unusual in that Lawrence dabbles in the supernatural (as he was to do again in 'The Rocking-Horse Winner' two years later) and that this is less a story in the traditional sense and more an exploration of the mind of a particular woman, based on his own wife, Frieda. Katherine, in the story, realises that her real love was her first husband whom she should, according to Lawrence, have submitted to to gain real happiness. As Lawrence...

A Dream of Life’ is unfinished but there is enough extant to let us know where Lawrence was going in this story. He begins by looking back and bemoaning what has become of his generation, under the thumb of women and lacking the spark of his father's mining friends. Then in a scene reminiscent of 'Pilgrim's Progress' he travels forward in time and sees his village in the distant future. The people are living in an idealized commune, but do they...

The Old Adam' The story is set in lodgings in Croydon and the incident may again be autobiographical, but the story examines for the first time in Lawrence's writing, the different and conflicting loves between men and women.

'Was this what it all meant - utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living?' In Odour of Chrysanthemums D.H. Lawrence explores the concept of human isolation and the nature of love and relationships. This is the story of Elizabeth, a young wife and mother waiting for her alcoholic husband to return home from what she assumes is another night of drinking...