13 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the life meant to keep you safe is the very thing keeping you from living?
In the Midlands mining town of Woodhouse, Alvina Houghton grows up under watchful eyes. Her father, James, pours the family’s money into failing ventures. Her devoted governess, Miss Frost, guards her closely. In D. H. Lawrence’s The Lost Girl, affection and respectability leave a clever young woman little room to discover what she wants.
When a travelling troupe arrives at her father’s Pleasure Palace, Alvina glimpses a life beyond the town’s rules. Among the performers is Ciccio, an Italian who lives by feeling and instinct. The story reaches toward a bare mountain village in Italy, as Alvina’s hunger for passion and freedom challenges the safety others choose for her.
What you’ll discover
- A town that watches Enter a sharply comic world where neighbours notice everything and respectability shapes a woman’s choices.
- Love that holds tight Meet Miss Frost, whose devoted care gives Alvina protection but also keeps her life confined.
- A father’s restless hopes Follow James Houghton’s grand schemes as his charm and optimism draw the family deeper into debt.
- The pull of elsewhere Step into the travelling troupe’s world, where Ciccio draws Alvina toward an unfamiliar way of living.
- Freedom beyond good manners Explore what a woman is allowed to want when duty and desire pull in different directions.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy a spirited heroine, sharp comedy about small-town manners, backstage life in a travelling show, and the wild beauty of the Italian mountains.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A father's dreams crowd out reality
- Protection comes at a personal cost
- Nursing opens a different life
- The cinema brings friendship and gossip
- Ciccio awakens fear and desire
- A new belonging has its price
- Independence competes with a powerful attachment
- Money and marriage narrow women's choices
- Alvina keeps a watchful inner self
Who’s who
- Alvina HoughtonA draper's daughter with sardonic eyes who wants to escape Woodhouse and find a life that is truly her own.
- James HoughtonAlvina's elegant, dreamy father, who sinks his money into one failing scheme after another.
- Miss PinnegarThe stout, soft-voiced manager of the workgirls, loyal to the house and fiercely respectable.
- Miss FrostAlvina's white-haired governess, who gives her whole strength to protecting the household and the girl she loves.
- Mr. MayA pink-faced showman in gray, full of stories, who manages the Endeavour and fears women who come too close.
- Madame RochardThe shrewd French dancer who leads the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe as Kishwegin and watches every penny.
- CiccioA silent, yellow-eyed Italian horseman from the mountains, who wants money, a piece of land and Alvina.
- Dr. MitchellA loud, rich Scottish doctor in Lancaster who wants Alvina as his wife and cannot bear refusal.
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The Lost Girl
by D. H. Lawrence · 1920
A draper's daughter in a mining town trades her nurse's cap for a travelling troupe and an Italian horseman.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“I like being lost.”
In short
What happens to a woman who is thirty, unmarried, and watched by every neighbour in a small mining town? In The Lost Girl, Alvina Houghton is that woman.
The Lost Girl at a glance
- Reading time
- About 9 h 15 min7 h 20 min fast, 11 h slow
- Length
- 131,700 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1920by D. H. Lawrence
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A draper of dreams ruins Manchester House
The novel opens in Woodhouse, a small coal town in the Midlands. At the top of its social ladder sits the coal owner, and at the base the miners. In the middle stands James Houghton, a tall, thin, refined man who inherits a fine drapery business.
James builds Manchester House and fills it with silks, muslins and elegant coats. He dreams that the gentry will stop their carriages outside. Instead, the townspeople gather at his window on Friday nights, pointing and giggling. The town wants cheap, ordinary goods, so he holds sale after sale. His wife, Clariss, grows ill from the strain.
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Details
- First published
- 1920
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 10 h 5 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Lawrence, D. H. The Lost Girl. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lost-girl.
Lawrence, D. H. (2026). The lost girl. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lost-girl (Original work published 1920)
Lawrence, D. H. The Lost Girl. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lost-girl.
@book{lawrence2026lost,
author = {Lawrence, D. H.},
title = {The Lost Girl},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-lost-girl},
note = {First published 1920}
}
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What is The Lost Girl about?
It follows Alvina Houghton, a draper's daughter in a Midlands mining town, who breaks away from a stifling home, tries nursing, joins a travelling theatre troupe, and finally leaves England with an Italian man named Ciccio.
Who is Ciccio in The Lost Girl?
Ciccio is Francesco Marasca, a quiet southern Italian horseman and performer with the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe. He becomes the man Alvina loves, and he takes her to his uncle's house in the mountain hamlet of Califano.
When was The Lost Girl written and is it a true story?
D. H. Lawrence wrote it around the time of the First World War, and the story is fiction. He drew on the Midlands mining towns of his youth and on his own life in Italy.
The author
D. H. Lawrence
1885–1930 · English novelist and poet
D. H. Lawrence was an English novelist and poet, among the most controversial and influential writers of the early twentieth century. Lady Chatterley's Lover, long banned for its frankness, became a landmark in the fight against literary censorship.
“I like being lost.”
More by D. H. Lawrence
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