The Ladybird is a long tale or novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 by 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...

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It was first drafted in 1915 as a short story entitled The Thimble. Lawrence rewrote and extended it under a new title in December 1921 and sent the final version to his English agent on 9 January 1922. It was collected with two other tales, The Captain's Doll

The Captain's Doll

The Captain's Doll is a short story or novella by the English author D. H. Lawrence. It was written in 1921 and first published by Martin Secker in March 1923 in a volume with The Ladybird and The Fox....

and The Fox

The Fox (novel)

The Fox is a novella by D. H. Lawrence published in 1923.Set in Berkshire, England during World War I, The Fox, like many of D. H. Lawrence’s other major works, treats the psychological relationships of three protagonists in a triangle of love and hatred...

, and the three novellas were then published in London by Martin 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...

in March 1923 under the title The Ladybird and in New York by Thomas Seltzer as The Captain's Doll in April 1923.

Standard edition

• The Ladybird, The Fox, The Captain's Doll (1923), edited by Dieter Mehl, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-35266-5