The Rainbow

David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) expected The Rainbow to cause a stir. In a characteristically open exploration of sensual and explicit themes, the novel traces more than sixty years of pre-war life and three generations of the Brangwen family. Employing language infused with the rich imagery and repetition of biblical texts to treat all subjects - from the green fields and empty skies of the Brangwen farm through to Ursula's encounter with a female schoolteacher - Lawrence took an assuredly striking approach. However, he was unprepared for the vitriolic attacks of his reviewers. The novel was branded 'utter filth' and 'a mass of obscenity'; it was banned only a month after its publication in 1915, unsold copies being confiscated and destroyed. A second, abridged edition would not appear for another eleven years. Now a landmark in the early modernist canon, the original and unabridged text of 1915 is reissued here.

1. How Tom Brangwen married a Polish lady; 2. They live at the marsh; 3. Childhood of Anna Lensky; 4. Girlhood of Anna Brangwen; 5. Wedding at the marsh; 6. Anna victrix; 7. The cathedral; 8. The child; 9. The marsh and the flood; 10. The widening circle; 11. First love; 12. Shame; 13. The man's world; 14. The widening circle; 15. The bitterness of ecstasy; 16. The rainbow.

Only a month after its original publication in 1915, this novel was banned. Its sensual and explicit themes, by now characteristic of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), were considered particularly offensive in wartime by many reviewers, and the saga of the Brangwen family would not reappear in Britain until 1926.