Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers is a novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence, published in 1913. It was his third novel, and he rewrote it four times before he was satisfied with it; the drafts were titled Paul Morel.

The book is set in a coal-mining district in Nottinghamshire and follows the Morel family. Walter Morel works in the pit, drinks and quarrels with his wife; Gertrude Morel came from a family that considered itself a cut above his, and the disappointment of the marriage is the force that shapes her children. Her attachment to her sons is intense, and after her eldest dies it settles on Paul, who is drawn into two relationships that her hold on him keeps from developing: Miriam, who wants the kind of love he cannot give her, and Clara, who is separated from her husband and more experienced in the world. Around the family the novel shows the work of the mines, the poverty and the sense of a life laid out in advance.

Lawrence's book was published to a mixed reception and to complaints about obscenity, and it is now read as one of the earliest English novels to treat working-class life from inside the family that lives it.