The Lost Girl

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The daughter of well-to-do tradespeople in the fictional mining town of Woodhouse, Alvina Houghton struggles to find excitement in her provincial surroundings and worries that she is condemned to become an old maid. After plans to elope with her lover to Australia and train as a nurse in London lead to nothing, she joins a travelling theatre group and succumbs to the charms of the dark, passionate Italian Ciccio. Although not enjoying today the same level of fame as Sons and Lovers or Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Lost Girl was greatly successful in its time, winning the prestigious 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and remains a classic Lawrence novel of sensual awakening and the yearning for freedom.

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The son of a coal miner, D. H. Lawrence was brought up in relative poverty, his working-class background providing inspiration for many of his early novels. Lawrence spent most of his adult life abroad in order to escape the conventions and hypocrisies of his own country, and advocated a return to a more harmonious relationship with nature in the face of modernity and industrialization. Controversial both during and after his lifetime, Lawrence's novels represent a milestone in twentieth-century literature.