A bibliography of the writings of D. H. Lawrence

by Edward D. McDonald

Somehow, it is the actual corpus and substance, the actual paper and rag volume of any of my works, that calls up these personal feelings and memories. It is the miserable tome itself which somehow delivers me to the vulgar mercies of the world. The voice inside is mine forever. But the beastly marketable chunk of a published volume is a bone which every dog presumes to pick with me.

William Heinemann published The White Peacock. I saw him once; and then I realized what an immense favour he was doing me. As a matter of fact, he treated me quite well.

I remember, at the last minute, when the book was all printed and ready to bind: some even bound: they sent me in great haste a certain page with a marked paragraph. Would I remove this paragraph, as it might be considered “objectionable,” and substitute an exactly identical number of obviously harmless words. Hastily I did so. And later, I noticed that the two pages, on one of which was the altered paragraph, were rather loose, not properly bound in to the book.—Only my mother’s copy had the paragraph unchanged.

I have wondered often if Heinemann’s just altered the “objectionable” bit in the first little batch of books they sent out, then left the others as first printed. Or whether they changed all but the one copy they sent me ahead.

It was my first experience of the objectionable. Later, William Heinemann said he thought Sons and Lovers one of the dirtiest books he had ever read. He refused to publish it.—I should not have thought the deceased gentleman’s reading had been so circumspectly narrow.

I forget the first appearance of The Trespasser and Sons and Lovers. I always hide the fact of publication from myself as far as possible. One writes, even at this moment, to some mysterious presence in the air. If that presence were not there, and one thought of even a single solitary actual reader, the paper would remain forever white.

But I always remember how, in a cottage by the sea, in Italy, I re-wrote almost entirely that play, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, right on the proofs which Mitchell Kennerley had sent me. And he nobly forbore with me.

But then he gave me a nasty slap. He published Sons and Lovers in America, and one day, joyful, arrived a cheque for twenty pounds. Twenty pounds in those days was a little fortune: and as it was a windfall, it was handed over to Madame; the first pin-money she had seen. Alas and alack, there was an alteration in the date of the cheque, and the bank would not cash it. It was returned to Mitchell Kennerley, but that was the end of it. He never made good, and never to this day made any further payment for Sons and Lovers. Till this year of grace 1924, America has had that, my most popular book, for nothing—as far as I am concerned.

Then came the first edition of The Rainbow. I’m afraid I set my rainbow in the sky too soon, before, instead of after the deluge. Methuen published that book, and he almost wept before the magistrate, when he was summoned for bringing out a piece of indecent literature. He said he did not know the dirty thing he had been handling, he had not read the work, his reader had misadvised him—and Peccavi! Peccavi! wept the now be-knighted gentleman. Then around me arose such a fussy sort of interest, as when a really scandalous bit of scandal is being whispered about one. In print my fellow-authors kept scrupulously silent, lest a bit of the tar might stick to them. Later Arnold Bennett and May Sinclair raised a kindly protest. But John Galsworthy told me, very calmly and ex cathedra, he thought the book a failure as a work of art.—They think as they please. But why not wait till I ask them, before they deliver an opinion to me? Especially as impromptu opinions by elderly authors are apt to damage him who gives as much as him who takes.