Volume II of the Letters presents more than 700 letters, covering the period from June 1913 to October 1916, from the enthusiastic reception of Sons and Lovers to the completion of the first manuscript of Women in Love. Lawrence visits England in June 1913 and receives recognition as the author of Sons and Lovers. He returns to Italy in the autumn of 1913 to work on his new novel 'The Sisters', which subsequently becomes The Rainbow and Women in Love. Lawrence and Frieda return to England in June 1914 to be married and are caught there by the War. The letters vividly record his reaction to...

This volume contains almost all the 763 letters Lawrence wrote in the last fifteen months of his life with an introduction, maps, notes, illustrations, chronology and index. Lawrence corresponded with publishers and agents, regarding Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Escaped Cock and Pansies. He wrote no new fiction, but there were paintings, poems, essays, newspaper articles, and his last work Apocalypse. There were dramatic episodes with the seizure of his Pansies manuscript, and the police raid on the exhibition of his paintings at a London gallery, with its subsequent trial.

This final volume of The Letters of D. H. Lawrence has a threefold purpose: to publish 148 letters to or from Lawrence that came to light too late to be entered in their correct chronological positions in earlier volumes; to correct errors in the first seven volumes and offer additional annotation; and--most importantly--to provide a comprehensive critical index to the entire edition. The Cambridge Edition of Lawrence's letters has been described as creating itself "a major new literary work." This volume brings that work to a fitting conclusion.