David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire, England, 11 September 1885. His father was a coal miner, his mother a genteel woman who sought education and refinement for her son. Lawrence earned a university degree and taught school for a short time. While still a student he began to publish his poems and short stories. He fell in love with the wife of a professor, Frieda von Richthofen Weekley. She eloped with Lawrence, abandoning her husband and three small children. Lawrence's pet themes of myth, freedom, redemption, the difficulty and necessity of emotional, erotic expression and the inevitable torments of family relationships occupied him throughout his life. Eventually, there would be accusations of obscenity, his novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" being the most prominent example.