SOURCE: Thornton, Weldon. “A Trio from Lawrence's England, My England and Other Stories: Readings of ‘Monkey Nuts,’ ‘The Primrose Path,’ and ‘Fanny and Annie’.” D. H. Lawrence Review 28, no. 3 (1999): 5-29.

In the following essay, Thornton urges greater attention to three of Lawrence's neglected stories—“Monkey Nuts,” “The Primrose Path,” and “Fanny and Annie”—as subtle and effective character studies.

D. H. Lawrence's England, My England, and Other Stories (1922) has been called his “most outstanding accomplishment as a writer of short stories” (Cushman 27) and has been the most discussed among his collections of short stories in terms of its integrity as a volume (see the essays by Cushman, Mackenzie, and Smith). While the volume appears to be held together mainly by the experience of World War I, several stories have nothing to do with the war, either directly or in retrospect. The less overt, more subtle thematic connection among...