DH Lawrence

Born the son of a coal-miner in Nottinghamshire in 1885, David Herbert Lawrence was encouraged by his mother to get an education and even while still a student, began to publish his poems and short stories. He fell in love with the wife of one of his professors at University and she eloped with him, leaving her husband and three children behind. They stayed together, though Lawrence had a brief affair with a young Cornish farmer, and his sexuality has remained something of a mystery. He became one of England's most controversial and prolific writers, publishing everything from travel books, to plays, to novels. Thirty years after his death in 1930, 'Women in Love' was published by Penguin books in its uncut form, prompting an obsenity charge of which they were found not guilty. "I am in love - and, my God, it's the greatest thing that can happen to a man. I tell you, find a woman you can fall in love with. Do it. Let yourself fall in love, if you haven't done so already, you are wasting your life." - D.H. Lawrence