What do you think?
Rate this book
The Rocking Horse Winner and Other Supernatural Tales
In his short life, British writer D. H. Lawrence (1885Ð1930) established himself as the author of such pioneering and controversial novels as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Women in Love. But throughout his career, Lawrence was attracted by the strange and fantastic, and this interest emerged in an array of stories that reflect many of the concerns of his mainstream fiction.
Several of Lawrence’s weird tales were commissioned by Lady Cynthia Asquith for her various anthologies, including The Ghost Book (1926). It was for this volume that Lawrence wrote his most famous horror story, “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” a grim tale of psychological terror and ambiguous supernaturalism. Asquith had rejected an earlier submission, “Glad Ghosts,” although this is also a powerful story in which a thinly disguised version of Lawrence himself appears as a character.
Many of Lawrence’s ghost stories feature complex love triangles. In “The Border Line,” the ghost of a first husband prevents his former wife from saving the life of her second husband. “The Lovely Lady” is the compelling story of a domineering woman who has sucked the life out of her dead son and is about to do the same to her still-living son.
Lawrence’s move to Taos, New Mexico, in 1922 inspired the bizarre novelette “The Woman Who Rode Away,” where a European woman becomes enmeshed in primitive rituals in the American Southwest. The story also hints of the revival of ancient gods.
Several of Lawrence’s weird tales were commissioned by Lady Cynthia Asquith for her various anthologies, including The Ghost Book (1926). It was for this volume that Lawrence wrote his most famous horror story, “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” a grim tale of psychological terror and ambiguous supernaturalism. Asquith had rejected an earlier submission, “Glad Ghosts,” although this is also a powerful story in which a thinly disguised version of Lawrence himself appears as a character.
Many of Lawrence’s ghost stories feature complex love triangles. In “The Border Line,” the ghost of a first husband prevents his former wife from saving the life of her second husband. “The Lovely Lady” is the compelling story of a domineering woman who has sucked the life out of her dead son and is about to do the same to her still-living son.
Lawrence’s move to Taos, New Mexico, in 1922 inspired the bizarre novelette “The Woman Who Rode Away,” where a European woman becomes enmeshed in primitive rituals in the American Southwest. The story also hints of the revival of ancient gods.
273 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 2018
1 person is currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
D.H. Lawrence
2,084 books4,191 followersDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Want to read
March 12, 2018This hardcover is numbered 40 of 250 produced and is signed by:
S. T. Joshi (editor)
Cristina Bencina (artist)
D. H. Lawrence (Facsimile) (1885-1930)
New introduction by S. T. Joshi.
All of D. H. Lawrence’s macabre short fiction collected in one volume.
S. T. Joshi (editor)
Cristina Bencina (artist)
D. H. Lawrence (Facsimile) (1885-1930)
New introduction by S. T. Joshi.
All of D. H. Lawrence’s macabre short fiction collected in one volume.
Displaying 1 of 1 review