The Plumed Serpent

The Plumed Serpent is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, begun when writer was living at the D. H. Lawrence Ranch near Taos in U.S. state of New Mexico in 1924. It was first published by Martin Secker in 1926. The original working title of an early draft was "Quetzalcoatl", a reference to the cult of the plumed serpent in Mexico.

The novel has a contemporary setting during the period of the Mexican Revolution. It opens with a group of tourists visiting a bullfight in Mexico City. One of them, Kate Leslie, departs in disgust and encounters Don Cipriano, a Mexican general. Later she meets his friend, an intellectual landowner Don Ramon, and travels to Sayula, a small town set on a lake. Ramon and Cipriano are leading a revival of a pre-Christian religion and Kate becomes drawn into their cult.

Standard editions

• The Plumed Serpent (1926), edited by L.D. Clark, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-22262-1

• The Plumed Serpent(1926), Edited with an introduction by Ronald G. Walker, Penguin English Library, 1983

• Quetzalcoatl (1925), edited by Louis L Martz, W W Norton Edition, 1998, ISBN 0-8112-1385-4 – Early draft of The Plumed Serpent

External links

• Völkisch Organicism and the Use of Primitivism in Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent