I know The Rainbow and Women in Love inside out, but I’ve only got to know the stories recently. The collection, England, My England, is just astonishing. Lawrence shows such great sensitivity to all living creatures, human or animal; woman, man or child — and to the shifting relationships between them. The title story is as great a piece of war literature as any poem by Owen or Sassoon. The protagonist Egbert “…] had not the faintest desire to overcome any foreigners or to help in their death. He had no conception of Imperial England, and Rule Britannia was just a joke to him”. And yet, perversely, he enlists. The description of Egbert’s death under fire, written through the dying man’s consciousness, is unforgettable, a real tour-de-force.
Collected in England, My England, Thomas Seltzer, 1922. Read it here
A Personal Anthology 