The White Peacock
By D. H. Lawrence
Narrated by Patrick Barker
Lawrence’s first novel tells the tale of a love triangle between Lettie Beardsall and her neighbours, George Saxton, son of a farmer, and Leslie Tempest, the local mine owners’ son. Lettie will marry Leslie, but remain sexually attracted George. George also marries but falls victim to alcohol. Inspired by Maurice Greiffenhagen’s painting ‘An Idyll’, ‘The White Peacock’ is both a romance and a novel about class and the industrialisation of the English countryside that draws on Lawrence’s youth. Though it bears traces of his apprenticeship as a novelist, ‘The White Peacock’ is a mature work that anticipates the psychological themes of ‘Sons and Lovers’ and the gamekeeper character of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’.
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