Part of Alma Classics' Evergreens series of popular classics, Sons
and Lovers is presented here with an extensive critical apparatus and
extra material, including a section of photographs and notes.
As the sensitive and delicate Gertrude begins to shrink from her drunken
and violent husband, their marriage becomes a battleground. Gertrude
turns increasingly towards her two eldest sons, William and Paul, and
determines that they will not grow up to be coal miners living in
poverty like their father. Yet soon William falls ill, and Paul seeks to
escape his mother's suffocating influence through a series of
relationships.
Closely autobiographical, and widely considered to be the first English
novel with a truly working-class background, Sons and Lovers is the
affecting portrait of a mining family torn apart by class divisions and
the conflict between filial love and the urge to follow one's own
desires.