David Herbert Lawrence, novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist, was born in Nottinghamshire, England, in 1885. Though better known as a novelist, Lawrence's first-published works (in 1909) were poems, and his poetry, especially his evocations of the natural world, have since had a significant influence on many poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Susan Glaspell was born in 1882 and raised in Davenport, Iowa. Glaspell began her career as a novelist and author of sentimental short stories for popular magazines. By 1915, she had turned her energies to the theater, becoming one of the founders of the Provincetown Players, a group devoted to experimental drama. In 1916, Glaspell moved with the company, now called the Playwright's Theatre, to Greenwich Village in New York, where for two seasons as writer, director, and actor, she played an important role in a group that came to have a major influence on the development of American drama. Both of these two writers write in secrecy, forcing the reader to decipher the story to find the theme, developing plot.
D. H. Lawrence used multiple forms of secrecy to make this story a classic. He did not only write a story that had a good plot line, but a story that had many in depth topics. The plot in The Rocking-Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence reveals to the reader conflicts between Paul and his mother using different levels or forms of secrecy. There are secrets hidden throughout the house that leads Paul and his mother to an unpleasant life. The first level of secrecy is the actual secrets that Paul and Paul's mother keep from each other. The second form of secrecy is that D. H. Lawrence uses a story telling style of writing. This way of writing in itself holds many secrets. Finally, the third level of secrecy is through the use of symbolism. The theme in this story that was hidden by Lawrence was that "luck is not acquired, but it is found".