Love Poems

London: John Long. 1908.

Inscribed by D.H.Lawrence. 16mo. 150x100mm. pp112. Original red cloth, extremities a little rubbed and bumped. Hinges starting to crack but overall a sound copy of what is essentially a cheap edition of Browning's Love Poems but lifted out of the ordinary here by its having been given by D.H.Lawrence to his friend Margaret (Peg) Brinton. The two had met when Peg, with her sister Irene were staying at a boarding house called Compton House in Bournemouth where Lawrence was also a guest. They had clearly formed a strong early bond as it seems that they had only met in January 1912 which is the date of this gift. Lawrence was convalescing by the sea following a life-threatening bout of pneumonia. The full inscription is heartfelt: "To Peg, these lessons in love. Hoping she may profit by them from her adoring Baby alias David Herbert Richards Lawrence. Compton House Bournemouth Jan 1912". It is extremely rare to find a gift inscription from Lawrence where he uses his full name.
Two photographs of Lawrence have been pasted in, one of them captioned "D. H. Lawrence & Meg Brinton at Kew Gardens", the other simply captioned with his name and a newspaper photograph of Lawrence is tipped in on the front pastedown. Lawrence's biography informs us that around the 25th April 1912, Lawrence visited Kew Gardens with Margaret and Irene. The precise nature of the relationship between Lawrence and Margaret seems unclear but it was clearly sufficiently close for her to destroy all his letters to her when she married. And, it must be said, you would not inscribe a book of celebrated love poems so fulsomely if you were not inclined to follow up your words with at least some sort of action. Which all makes this little book with its rather wonderful inscription an intriguing piece of evidence in an otherwise mysterious episode in Lawrence's life.