But what James lost downstairs he tried to recover upstairs. With the first whisperings of World War I in the background of their new Italian home, Alvina must contend with this new relationship and come to terms with what might be only a fleeting time of freedom. The Lost Girl was written exclusively in Italy and Sicily, it seems, but that is perhaps the only steady branch in its family tree. This was coming down in the world, with a vengeance. Now lovers, Alvina and Ciccio flee the safety and mediocrity of her hometown in order to get married and start a life together in Naples. It was awarded the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the fiction category. Lawrence started it shortly after writing Women in Love, and worked on it only sporadically until he completed it in 1920. One of the traveling players employed at the theater, a sensual Italian man named Ciccio, catches Alvina's eye and she finds herself intensely attracted to him. It was awarded the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the fiction category. Her father's plans and dreams go misunderstood in the town, but the theater itself does quite well. In a drastic effort to regain his fortune and secure his daughter's standing in society, James Houghton buys, of all things, a theater.

The magnet that tries to draw together the different particles of which the beautiful and vigorous world of Nottingham is made is this incandescent body, this beauty glowing in the flesh, this intense and burning light. Just as the lovely Alvina Houghton comes of age, her widowed father's business starts to dry up. The world of Sons and Lovers is perpetually in process of cohesion and dissolution.

Awarded the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, The Lost Girl is a classic tale of passion, sexual awakening, devastation, and destitution.

The Lost Girl by D.H. Lawrence