A back cover of the first edition of David Herbert Lawrence's Apocalypse bears information in three languages—in the original, German and French—about the exact thing the reader is holding in their hands. It reads:

A few words about the man to begin.

Life in Motion

D. H. Lawrence was born in 1885, in the small mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, where he attended local schools. He had a slight cough from his early days. His father worked down the mine; his mother was a teacher of artistic and intellectual ambition and, for the most part, the son's upbringing was her responsibility. In 1907, Lawrence became a teacher at the Davidson Road School in Croydon (now a district of London), which made his financial situation stable. He takes his first steps in literature propped up by Ford Madox Ford, who makes his poetry debut as well as publication of The White Peacock (1911) possible. Around this time, his mother dies of cancer, causing a nervous breakdown in the young writer and forcing him to resign from his teaching position. In March or April 1912, he makes the acquaintance of Frieda Weekley (née: von Richthofen), a mother of three children six years his senior, a Baroness and his former university lecturer's wife.