Frieda Lawrence
Frieda Lawrence (born Emma Frieda Johanna Maria von Richthofen; 11 August 1879 – 11 August 1956) was a German-born author and the wife of English novelist D. H. Lawrence, with whom she shared a tumultuous marriage that profoundly influenced his literary output.[1][2] Born into a minor aristocratic family in Metz, then part of the German Empire, she married British professor Ernest Weekley in 1899 and bore three children before meeting Lawrence, who tutored her sons, in 1912.[3] That year, she eloped with Lawrence to Germany, abandoning her family and prompting a bitter divorce finalized in 1913.[4] The couple wed on 13 July 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War, which exacerbated tensions due to her German nationality, leading to official surveillance and social ostracism in England.[5][6] Their peripatetic life spanned Europe, Australia, the American Southwest, and Mexico, marked by financial precarity, recurrent infidelities—primarily on her part—and explosive quarrels that Lawrence channeled into works portraying complex, defiant women inspired by her persona.[7][8] Frieda outlived Lawrence, who succumbed to tuberculosis in 1930, by 26 years, settling permanently in Taos, New Mexico, where she hosted literary figures and remarried Italian officer Angelo Ravagli in 1950.[9] She later penned an autobiography reflecting on their bond, emphasizing its raw vitality over conventional harmony.[9]