Mr Noon is an unfinished novel

Unfinished work

An unfinished work is creative work that has not been finished. Its creator may have chosen never to finish it or may have been prevented from doing so by circumstances outside of their control such as death. Such pieces are often the subject of speculation as to what the finished piece would have...

 by the English writer, D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

. It appears to have been drafted in 1920 and 1921 and then abandoned by the author. It consists of two parts.

The first part was published posthumously by Secker

Martin Secker

Martin Secker , born Percy Martin Secker Klingender, was a London publisher who was responsible for producing the work of a distinguished group of literary authors, including D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Norman Douglas, and Henry James...

 as a long short story in the volume entitled A Modern Lover which came out in 1934. This fragment was reissued in 1968 in the Phoenix II collection of Lawrence's assorted writings. It is set in the East Midlands, where the author was born and spent his youth. The second fragment was finally published along with the introductory section in 1984 and describes the experiences of the main character during his elopement to the continent. The novel is often regarded as autobiographical in places.

The book is characterised by a flippant, sarcastic tone as Lawrence reflects on the sexual behaviour and attitudes of provincial men and women in the period before the First World War.

Standard edition

• Mr Noon (1920?) - Parts I and II, edited by Lindeth Vasey, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25251-2