Paul Metcalfe

The Mortal Coil' is one of Lawrence's darker stories. From adversity the lovers find a kind of happiness in each other only for death to snatch it away.

The Flying Fish' is unfinished but tells the story of an Englishman, Gethin Day, returning home after years in South America. There is a hint of the home-sickness Lawrence may have felt during his long exile. The bulk of the story is the time spent on the ship which is taking Day back to England. It is a ship of fools, a 'plague ship' and the only positive note is the joy Day sees in the play of the flying fish and porpoises around the ship. It is...

Lawrence wrote three drafts of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' between 1926 and 1928: 'The First Lady Chatterley's Lover', this audio book, 'John Thomas and Lady Jane' and the final version, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. All three books are published as ebooks and paperbacks by the Blackthorn Press. Although all three books have the same story line of an aristocratic woman falling in love with a working-class man, there are differences in their tone and sensibilities....

The Horse Dealer's Daughter' is a story, gripping in its content. It encompasses the terror of death and disgrace which is redeemed by passion and sexuality. The question Lawrence leaves open is whether the doctor's avowal of love is genuine or driven by the awakening of his own sexuality and pity for the woman.

Once' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. The story is largely autobiographical, written when Lawrence and Frieda (Anita in the Story) had fled England together to live in Austria and Italy. Frieda had had an affair while they were in Austria, and she told Lawrence about it. 'Once' explores Lawrence's reactions to being betrayed while still being in love and desiring the betrayer.

Christs in the Tirol' is more of an essay on this peculiar art form than a short story, it is included in this series as forming part of Lawrence's record of his wanderings in Europe and partly as a record of Lawrence's attitude to religion and death and foreshadowing his own eventual suffering and death.

Monkey Nuts' was written by D H Lawrence in 1922. 'Monkey Nuts' turns the traditional love story on its head. It is the woman (the new liberated woman Lawrence had little time for) who does the chasing and the boy who is reluctant. Lawrence seems to be saying it is the unspoken love between the two men in the story which is more satisfying than the possible love between the man and the woman which the boy rejects. Although the older man goes through...

A Sick Collier'. Lawrence returns in this story to the scenes of his childhood and the colliers he was brought up with. The wife in the story is probably based on his mother although the husband is unlike the drinking, brutal father portrayed in 'Sons and Lovers', Lawrence's autobiographical novel. The story is a vivid portrayal of the life of a young couple when an accident strikes the husband down but does not succeed as a short story, lacking any...

Goose Fair was written by D H Lawrence in 1910. Lawrence sets his story against the backdrop of the industrial troubles caused by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. A young woman is torn between her need for a lover and her contempt for what she perceives to be his dishonesty in the burning down of a mill. Is all love a compromise between the ideal and the reality of life?

A Modern Lover' was written by D H Lawrence in 1909. A young man returns home to his first love to declare his feelings for her, but the moment is lost when the girl will not give herself sexually. This theme was to be explored fully in Lawrence's novel, 'Sons and Lovers'