SONS AND LOVERS
THE MODERN LIBRARY
OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS
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SONS AND LOVERS
BYD. H. LAWRENCE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BYJOHN MACY
INTRODUCTION COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY BONI AND LIVERIGHT
THE MODERN LIBRARY
BENNETT A. CERF · DONALD S. KLOPPER · ROBERT K. HAAS
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed by Parkway Printing Company Bound by H. Wolff
INTRODUCTION
An introduction to this book is as superfluous as a candle in front ofa searchlight. But a convention of publishing seems to require that thecandle should be there, and I am proud to be the one to hold it. Aboutten years ago I picked up from the pile of new books on my desk a copyof Sons and Lovers by a man of whom I had never heard, and I startedto race through it with the immoral speed of the professional reviewer.But after a page or two I found myself reading, really reading. Herewas—here is—a masterpiece in which every sentence counts, a bookcrammed with significant thought and beautiful, arresting phrases, thework of a singular genius whose gifts are more richly various thanthose of any other young English novelist.
To appreciate the rich variety of Mr. Lawrence we must read his laternovels and his volumes of poetry. But Sons and Lovers reveals therange of his power. Here are combined and fused the hardest sort of"realism" and almost lyric imagery and rhythm. The speech of thepeople is that of daily life and the things that happen to them arenormal adventures and accidents; they fall in love, marry, work, fail,succeed, die. But of their deeper emotions and of the relations ofthese little human beings to the earth and to the stars Mr. Lawrencemakes something as near to poetry as prose dare be without violatingits proper "other harmony."
Take the marvellous paragraph on next to the last page (Mr. Lawrencedepends so little on plot in the ordinary sense of the word that it isperfectly fair to read the end of his book first):
"Where was he? One tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear ofwheat lost in the field. He could not bear it. On every side theimmense dark silence seemed pressing[vi] him, so tiny a spark, intoextinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. Night,in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyon