Books: At the Drop of a Stamp

THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF D. H. LAWRENCE (1,307 pp.)—Edited by Harry T. Moorp—Viking ($17.50).

"Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulseless lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins." Thus D. H. Lawrence in a letter to a friend, writing on the subject of his homeland. But Lawrence distributed his displeasure evenhandedly; he had equally sharp words for the U.S.: "It's so tough and wearing, with the iron springs poking out...