The White Peacock

Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.8

Word count: 681K words
Chapters: 69

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The White Peacock by D. H. LawrenceAuthor: Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 13, 2012

Editor's review

The White Peacock is D. H. Lawrence's first novel. Though less well known than later works such as Sons and Lovers, it already shows his abiding interest in nature, desire, and class relations. Set in the English countryside, the novel follows the emotional entanglements and changing fortunes of young men and women, revealing the cracks in rural life under the encroachment of industrial civilization. Lawrence's descriptions of landscape are delicate and sensuous, and his characters' inner lives are often mirrored in woods, hills, birds, and animals, giving the book a rich poetic quality. This is a public-domain electronic edition from Project Gutenberg, in the original English, and serves as a good introduction to the beginnings of Lawrence's art; read alongside his later works, it makes the evolution of his themes and style all the clearer. It is best read slowly, attending to the interplay between natural imagery and characters' moods, rather than rushing after plot.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary readers curious about the beginnings and early style of Lawrence's writing
Readers of English fiction who prefer rural settings and delicate description of landscape
Students studying the conflict between nature and industry in modern English literature
Readers who want to read classic works in the original at low cost through public-domain e-books

Not a good fit for

Readers of genre fiction who expect strong plotting and fast-paced narrative
Beginners whose English reading ability is not yet up to a long literary work in the original
Readers with fixed expectations of Lawrence's later style who do not want to read his early apprentice work

Reading tips

Read the first few chapters to get a feel for how the rural setting and the characters' relationships are laid out, then decide your pace.
Keep a pen and paper handy to mark passages where natural imagery corresponds to characters' moods, so you can return to them.
Read it alongside one of Lawrence's later novels to observe changes in theme and style.
With unfamiliar landscape vocabulary in the English original, don't look up every word; grasp the overall atmosphere first.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or in the original English?

This is a public-domain e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with the main text in the original English rather than a Chinese translation. It suits readers with some grounding in English who want direct contact with Lawrence's early writing.

Can I read this without having read any other Lawrence?

Yes. This is Lawrence's first novel, with themes and style still taking shape, and it requires no prior knowledge of his other works. Its style does differ from the later novels, however; reading Sons and Lovers and others afterward makes the development of his writing clearer.

What background knowledge do I need to read this book?

Some familiarity with English rural society and industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries helps, but is not essential. The book's descriptions of nature and of characters' feelings stand on their own; readers can begin with the atmosphere of the text itself.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930 Author

D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Lawrence, 1885–1930) was an English novelist, poet and essayist. The library holds 25 of his works, including the novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and The Lost Girl, the short-story collections The Prussian Officer and England, My England, and the travel book Twilight in Italy. His writing often draws on mining and rural life and focuses on relations between men and women, class, and the pressure modern civilization places on individual vitality, with a candid style that is sensuous and psychologically searching, at once poetic and forceful. Because his work boldly touched on desire and social taboo, he was controversial in his lifetime and is now regarded as a major voice in twentieth-century English literature. Detailed information beyond his works is limited, so this note relies on the available works and established common knowledge.