Sold – Lawrence Discusses Publication and Translation of His Works With His Literary Agent

Author whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Lawrence and his wife arrived in the U.S. in September 1922. There they considered establishing a utopian community on what was then known as the 160-acre Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico. They acquired the property, now called the D. H. Lawrence Ranch, in 1924 in exchange for the manuscript of “Sons and Lovers”. In March 1925 he suffered a near fatal attack of malaria and tuberculosis whilst on a third visit to Mexico. Although he eventually recovered, his health was never good again.

Autograph Letter Signed, Questa, New Mexico, April 6, 1925, to his British literary agent, Curtis Brown, concerning publication and translation of some of his works.  “We got back on to our own ranch yesterday. Today it threatens to snow: but with a good log fire, I don’t care. The Indian is chopping wood in the yard, & his wife is helping Mrs. Lawrence to get tidy: everything all right. I’m still not much good, but shall soon pick up. I wish you’d have sent to me ‘The Calendar’ copies that contain ‘The Princess’. I should like to see it. A Danish woman, friend of ours, is pining to translate ‘The Captain’s Doll’ novelettes into Danish…I hear Norman Douglas attacks me on behalf of Magnus. Rather disgusting, when one knows what N. D. is & how he treated M., wouldn’t give him a son; & when I have a letter from Douglas telling me to do what I liked & say what I liked about that MS: and when one knows how bitter Magnus was about Douglas, at the end. And when one knows how much worse the whole fact were, than those I give. – However, canaille will be canaille…” The Norman Douglas mentioned was an author who engaged in a celebrated feud with Lawrence after Lawrnce based an unflattering character on him in “Aaron’s Rod.”