D. H. Lawrence’s best-known late fictions are presented in this volume of six stories, which is dominated by two powerful novellas.
The Virgin and the Gipsy: a young woman from a restrictive English rectory discovers further dimensions to life through her contact with a gipsy.
In The Escaped Cock (also known as The Man Who Died) an unnamed man – in fact Lawrence’s vision of Christ – is resurrected and escapes from his tomb. Lawrence said about it
I wrote a story of the Resurrection, where Jesus gets up and feels very sick about everything, and can’t stand the old crowd any more – so cuts out – and as he heals up, he begins to find what an astonishing place the phenomenal world is, far more marvellous than any salvation or heaven – and thanks his stars he needn’t have a mission any more.”
Both novellas deal with the themes of escape and sexual awakening, which are echoed in the four short stories and three fragments also collected here.
This edition restores Lawrence’s final texts, before the changes introduced by censorship, mistakes in transmission and various other forms of interference, with variants recorded. The introduction traces the history of the stories, while the notes offer help with allusions, contexts and other points of potential difficulty or interest.
The Virgin and the Gipsy
Things
Rawdon’s Roof
Mother and Daughter
The Escaped Cock
The Blue Moccasins
