Jenny Turner described Sons and Lovers as a semi-autobiographical work in The Sexual Imagination from Acker to Zola: A Feminist Companion (1993). She maintained that it showed both "great candor" and "much self-pity".[4] The critic Harold Bloom listed Sons and Lovers as one of the books that have been important and influential in Western culture in The Western Canon (1994).[5] In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Sons and Lovers ninth on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century.[6]
The novel contains a frequently quoted use of the English dialect word "nesh". The speech of several protagonists is represented in Lawrence's written interpretation of the Nottinghamshire dialect,[7] which also features in several of his poems.[8]
