This short story collection represents Lawrence’s first ever published body of work, containing twelve brilliant and engaging short stories.
The titular ‘Prussian Officer’ is a gambler, drinker, and serial womaniser who has wasted his youth. He finds himself alone in the world with no wife to return home to.
He is profoundly jealous of his young orderly, a vibrant young man with a beautiful wife, whose happiness raises violent feelings in his commanding officer.
Throughout this engaging short story, sexual tensions give rise to violent outbursts of masculine domination.
Other short stories, such as ‘A Fragment of Stained Glass’ and ‘Daughters of a Vicar’, weave individuality, happiness, and failure among the divine forces of nature to create works of profound beauty and sensitivity.
It is a deeply poignant collection of violence, sexuality, and repression that is perfect reading for any lovers of the early modernist movement.
David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) was an English author and poet. His books focused on the negative effects of industrialisation and modernity.
However, he is best known for the controversy that surrounded his leading novels, which contained explicit descriptions of sex and sexuality.
His novels include 'Sons and Lovers', 'The Rainbow', 'Women in Love' and 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'.
When 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' was first published in full in 1960, long after Lawrence's death, the publisher Penguin was prosecuted under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. The “not guilty” verdict resulted in greater freedom for writers and publishers.
