11 September: DH Lawrence

DH Lawrence was born on this date in 1885. Here are 10 things you might not know about him.

1. The house in which he was born, 8a Victoria Street, Eastwood, is now the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum.
2. He was the first local pupil to win a County Council scholarship to Nottingham High School in nearby Nottingham.
3. His first novel was The White Peacock, published in 1911. It had taken him five years to write - with three complete re-writes. The draft versions were entitled Laetitia, and the novel was inspired by a painting Lawrence loved, An Idyll, by Maurice Greiffenhagen.
4. His second novel, The Trespasser, was based on the intimate diaries given to him by a colleague at his teaching job, Helen Corke. The diaries were about her unhappy love affair.
5. Lawrence was twice accused of being a spy. The first time was in 1912, after he eloped to Metz with Frieda Weekley, a German born married woman who was six years older than him. The area was a disputed zone between Germany and France, and Lawrence was arrested as a British spy, but Freida's father came to his rescue on that occasion and he was released. Living in Cornwall with Frieda during World War I, the fact he was living with a German woman and spoke out against militarism resulted in him being suspected of being a German spy who was signalling to German submarines off the Cornish coast. Lawrence was forced to leave Cornwall at three days' notice under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act.
6. Somewhat disenchanted with England after this, he left with Frieda and spent the rest of his life travelling, only returning to England twice for brief visits. He called this his 'savage pilgrimage'. His accounts of his travels led to him being widely acclaimed as a travel writer.
7. Despite his lifelong partnership with Frieda, it was possible he was gay. Lawrence developed a strong and possibly romantic relationship with a Cornish farmer named William Henry Hocking in 1917 which Frieda believed was sexual. He certainly explored the theme of homosexuality in his writing. Some of his letters come close to coming out, with quotes like "I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not ..." and "I believe the nearest I've come to perfect love was with a young coal-miner when I was about 16."
8. He bought a ranch in New Mexico - in exchange for the manuscript of his novel, Sons and Lovers.
9. As well as his novels, Lawrence wrote about 800 poems, and was also fond of painting. His paintings were exhibited at the Warren Gallery in Mayfair in 1929, and his paintings were as controversial as his writing. While the exhibition got a favourable reception from critics, thirteen of the twenty-five pictures were confiscated by police and Lawrence could only get them back by promising never to show them in England again.
10. When Lady Chatterley's Lover was published by Penguin in 1960, the publishers were tried under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. Penguin had to prove that the book was of literary merit in order to avoid prosecution. The prosecution objected to the frequent use of swear words, but probably shot themselves in the foot when the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked if it were the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read", since most people by then didn't have servants. The prosecution was ridiculed for being out of touch with changing social norms and the verdict, delivered on 2 November 1960, was "not guilty".