David Herbert Lawrence is one of the foremost writers of the twentieth century.

He was
a prolific writer, who during the twenty years of his literary career tried his hand at different
genres of literature. During this creative period, not a year passed without the publication of
something important from his pen. He was a versatile genius who could excel in many fields. His
novels and short stories are his most important and interesting work. He was a good poet and a
gifted writer of descriptive and expository essays. Lawrence was one of the greatest English
letter writers and his letters rank with those of John Keats and Gerald Manly Hopkins. Many of
his contemporaries like Bennett, Wells, Galsworthy, Kipling were as celebrated as Lawrence, yet
none of them had the impact on their age and ours that Lawrence had and yet continues to weild.

Lawrence was not only a great creative genius but was also gifted with a prophetic vision,
he wanted to use novel as a vehicle for communicating his vision of life. Thus fiction and
doctrine co-exist in almost all his major novels. Often he gets so obsessed with his philosophic
ideas that the aesthetic value of his novels is considerably reduced. Eliseo Vivas, in his book The
Failure and the Triumph of Art considers Aaron’s Rod, Kangaroo, The Plumed Serpent and Lady
Chatterley’s Lover failures because in these novels Lawrence the prophet gets better of
Lawrence the artist and these novels are reduced to the level of propaganda literature. And he
declares Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow and Women in Love to be the triumphs of art because in
them the prophetic vision of the novelist is fully integrated with his creative faculties, and they
satisfy the aesthetic sensibility of the reader as they promote his awareness of life. In any case,
for just evaluation and appreciation of Lawrence’s works, it is essential to understand some of
the leading ideas that are central to his thinking.