He was a tall, thin, elegant young man with side-whiskers, genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. Now James Houghton, at the age of twenty-eight, inherited a splendid business in Manchester goods, in Woodhouse. The house of Houghton had always been well-to-do: tradespeople, we must admit but after a few generations of affluence, tradespeople acquire a distinct cachet. In his palmy days, James Houghton was crême de la crême of Woodhouse society. An updated version of 'Ottoline', with a new Introduction by the author, will be published by The Svengali Press in 2017.īut let us retreat to the early eighties, when Alvina was a baby: or even further back, to the palmy days of James Houghton. Will she fight again for independence? Sandra Jobson (Darroch) is the secretary of the DH Lawrence Society of Australia, and is the author of six books, including the first biography of Lady Ottoline Morrell, 'Ottoline: The Life of Lady Ottoline Morrell' (Chatto Windus 1975). Originally called 'The Insurrection of Miss Houghton', it tells the story of Alvina Houghton, who fights for independence as a woman, but ends up falling in love with an Italian peasant form a mountain village. It is his only novel to have won a literary prize.

'The Lost Girl' was in fact Lawrence's third novel, but was not published until 1920. In it Sandra Jobson shows how Lawrence based part of his character Alvina Houghton on Katherine Mansfield, the New Zealand short-story writer. 'How Lawrence Found His Lost Girl in Cornwall', is the title of the Introduction to this edition of Lawrence's sixth major novel.

The Lost Girl by D.H. Lawrence