- Hardcover: 204 pages
- Publisher: Bastian Books (18 Aug 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0554322102
- ISBN-13: 978-0554322100
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.6 x 1.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
England, My England
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Product Description
Product Description
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
About the Author
D.H. Lawrence had unconventional opinions, especially about sexuality, and at the time of his death he was thought of mainly as a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. But E.M. Forster, in an obituary notice, described him as ""the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation."" Later critics concurred, and Lawrence is now remembered as an important modernist intellectual.
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
DH Lawrence is famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, for the novel Lady Chatterly's Lover. England my England is a most enjoyable collection of short stories investigating human emotions with some quite unexpected twists and turns that keeps you guessing to the end. The stories are generally around a dozen pages each and as such make excellent bedtime reading.
Format:Kindle Edition
I don't really know where to start with this review. Which doesn't really matter as Mr Lawrence doesn't seem to know how to end these 'short stories'.
They aren't badly written stories and move along quite nicely but then just stop. That's it.
For example 'Monkey Nuts' about the comely maiden Miss Stokes who flirts with Joe who is a sort of labourer at the railway station. He doesn't fancy her (we aren't told why - she is an attractive girl) even though his more worldly wise pal Albert tries to encourage him. So what happens next, we wait in anticipation as we turn the page... Nothing. She just gives up, goes away again and Joe is 'relieved'.
Even worse is the story 'Wintry Peacock'. A woman finds a letter (written in French) to her ex-soldier husband who has recently returned from the war. She asks a passing stranger if he can translate it for her. He realises it is from the soldier's lover in Belgium who is distraught that he has returned to England, she also writes that she has had his baby. The stranger decides that he can't tell the woman this, so makes out the letter is just from a friend her husband met during the war and is just bit of trivial gossip. The woman seems to guess the truth, though. A promising start to an interesting short story, you might think. What happens next? Does the lady from Belgium turn up with the baby in her arms? Does the soldier's wife find out the truth? No. The soldier ends up meeting the stranger, who tells him what was in the letter. They laugh about it. The end. And don't ask what the business with Joey the Peacock was about.
Maybe I am missing the point and someone can enlighten me. I know Lawrence's work is of a different era and of a different style to modern fiction, but a story still needs a 'proper' ending in my opininion. These stories just left me feeling a bit empty.
It's a free download on Kindle so no harm done, I just expected more.
They aren't badly written stories and move along quite nicely but then just stop. That's it.
For example 'Monkey Nuts' about the comely maiden Miss Stokes who flirts with Joe who is a sort of labourer at the railway station. He doesn't fancy her (we aren't told why - she is an attractive girl) even though his more worldly wise pal Albert tries to encourage him. So what happens next, we wait in anticipation as we turn the page... Nothing. She just gives up, goes away again and Joe is 'relieved'.
Even worse is the story 'Wintry Peacock'. A woman finds a letter (written in French) to her ex-soldier husband who has recently returned from the war. She asks a passing stranger if he can translate it for her. He realises it is from the soldier's lover in Belgium who is distraught that he has returned to England, she also writes that she has had his baby. The stranger decides that he can't tell the woman this, so makes out the letter is just from a friend her husband met during the war and is just bit of trivial gossip. The woman seems to guess the truth, though. A promising start to an interesting short story, you might think. What happens next? Does the lady from Belgium turn up with the baby in her arms? Does the soldier's wife find out the truth? No. The soldier ends up meeting the stranger, who tells him what was in the letter. They laugh about it. The end. And don't ask what the business with Joey the Peacock was about.
Maybe I am missing the point and someone can enlighten me. I know Lawrence's work is of a different era and of a different style to modern fiction, but a story still needs a 'proper' ending in my opininion. These stories just left me feeling a bit empty.
It's a free download on Kindle so no harm done, I just expected more.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Beware of the bulldog Mrs. Nixon
21 April 2011
Format:Hardcover
D. H. Lawrence has written almost as many collections of short stories as novels. England, My England from 1922 is the first such collection that I have read. I normally do not enjoy the short story format, yet while I was still reading my first Lawrence novel, Sons and Lovers, I thought that the shorter format would suit Lawrence (and me, the fussy reader) better. In comparison to the length of time it took me to finish Sons and Lovers and Women in Love, I raced through the stories in England, My England, with the exception of the first story, the title of which the collection was named after.
It did not bode well that such a boring story should start the collection, but in it Lawrence reveals the same contradictions that typify his writing and continue throughout his stories. In "England, My England", he writes:
"But he [Winifred's husband] would not give himself to what Winifred called life, Work. No, he would not go into the world and work for money. No, he just would not. If Winifred liked to live beyond their small income--well, it was her look-out."
Throughout the story Winifred bemoaned that her husband Egbert would not go out and get a job. In spite of this, she also felt:
"And Winifred did not really want him to go out into the world to work for money. Money became, alas, a word like a firebrand between them, setting them both aflame with anger."
The stories get better, and the dialogue and descriptions become racier and less couched in euphemism. The final story, "Fanny and Annie", deals with a woman returning to her hometown to marry her first love. Fanny no longer loves Harry as passionately as she felt ten years ago, yet is settling for him since she feels she has no better options. Harry, meanwhile, has slept around with the loosest woman in town, Annie. Annie's mother causes a scandalous scene (in church, no less) where she interrupts the choir and yells out to the entire congregation that Harry has gotten her daughter pregnant and abandoned her. This was a real page-turner and I rushed through the story excitedly.
Lawrence's contradictions appear in "Fanny and Annie" as well. While Harry is singing his solo in the choir, his fiancée Fanny thinks:
"He, it goes without saying, sang like a canary this particular afternoon, with a certain defiant passion which pleasantly crisped the blood of the congregation."
and then, in the same paragraph:
"But, oh, also, it was so repugnant."
One of the funniest stories was "Tickets, Please", where the conductors of a tram-car company, all women, corner the womanizing inspector and beat him up. The inspector had dated and promised the world to all the women in the firm and they beat him into making him select just one of them.
There are more D. H. Lawrence novels in my library that I want to read but no other short story collections. After England, My England, I will seek them out.
It did not bode well that such a boring story should start the collection, but in it Lawrence reveals the same contradictions that typify his writing and continue throughout his stories. In "England, My England", he writes:
"But he [Winifred's husband] would not give himself to what Winifred called life, Work. No, he would not go into the world and work for money. No, he just would not. If Winifred liked to live beyond their small income--well, it was her look-out."
Throughout the story Winifred bemoaned that her husband Egbert would not go out and get a job. In spite of this, she also felt:
"And Winifred did not really want him to go out into the world to work for money. Money became, alas, a word like a firebrand between them, setting them both aflame with anger."
The stories get better, and the dialogue and descriptions become racier and less couched in euphemism. The final story, "Fanny and Annie", deals with a woman returning to her hometown to marry her first love. Fanny no longer loves Harry as passionately as she felt ten years ago, yet is settling for him since she feels she has no better options. Harry, meanwhile, has slept around with the loosest woman in town, Annie. Annie's mother causes a scandalous scene (in church, no less) where she interrupts the choir and yells out to the entire congregation that Harry has gotten her daughter pregnant and abandoned her. This was a real page-turner and I rushed through the story excitedly.
Lawrence's contradictions appear in "Fanny and Annie" as well. While Harry is singing his solo in the choir, his fiancée Fanny thinks:
"He, it goes without saying, sang like a canary this particular afternoon, with a certain defiant passion which pleasantly crisped the blood of the congregation."
and then, in the same paragraph:
"But, oh, also, it was so repugnant."
One of the funniest stories was "Tickets, Please", where the conductors of a tram-car company, all women, corner the womanizing inspector and beat him up. The inspector had dated and promised the world to all the women in the firm and they beat him into making him select just one of them.
There are more D. H. Lawrence novels in my library that I want to read but no other short story collections. After England, My England, I will seek them out.
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