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Look Inside | Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Sep 11, 2001 | ISBN 9780375758003 Buy
Nov 01, 1983 | ISBN 9780553212624 Buy *This format is not eligible to earn points towards the Reader Rewards program
Jan 30, 2007 | ISBN 9780553903386 Buy
Oct 31, 2000 | ISBN 9780679641643 Buy
Also available from:
Available from:
Sep 11, 2001 | ISBN 9780375758003
Nov 01, 1983 | ISBN 9780553212624
Jan 30, 2007 | ISBN 9780553903386
Oct 31, 2000 | ISBN 9780679641643
Introduction by Kathryn Harrison Inspired by the long-standing affair between D. H. Lawrence’s German wife and an Italian peasant, Lady Chatterley’s Lover follows the intense passions of Constance Chatterley. Trapped in an unhappy marriage to an aristocratic mine owner whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent, Constance enters into a liaison with the gamekeeper Mellors. Frank Kermode called the book D. H. Lawrence’s “great achievement,” Anaïs Nin described it as “his best novel,” and Archibald MacLeish hailed it as “one of the most important works of fiction of the century.” Along with an incisive Introduction by Kathryn Harrison, this Modern Library edition includes the transcript of the judge’s decision in the famous 1959 obscenity trial that allowed Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be published in the United States.
Lyric and sensual, D.H. Lawrence’s last novel is one of the major works of fiction of the twentieth century. Filled with scenes of intimate beauty, explores the emotions of a lonely woman trapped in a sterile marriage and her growing love for the robust gamekeeper of her husband’s estate. The most controversial of Lawrence’s books, Lady Chatterly’s Lover joyously affirms the author’s vision of individual regeneration through sexual love. The book’s power, complexity, and psychological intricacy make this a completely original work—a triumph of passion, an erotic celebration of life.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover was inspired by the long-standing affair between Frieda, Lawrence’s aristocratic German wife, and an Italian peasant who eventually became her third husband; Lawrence’s struggle with sexual impotence; and the circumstances of his and Frieda’s courtship and the early years of their marriage. Constance Chatterley, married to an aristocrat and mine owner whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent, has an affair with Mellors, a gamekeeper, becomes pregnant, and considers abandoning her husband. One of the seminal class novels of the century, it was considered flagrantly pornographic when first published in 1928. The book also exists in two other, completely different versions: The First Lady Chatterley and John Thomas and Lady Jane. Lawrence considered Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be definitive, and the one least likely to be prosecuted, and although its early banning proved him wrong, a famous obscenity trial some three decades after his death in 1930 finally cleared it for wider dissemination.
D. H. Lawrence, whose fiction has had a profound influence on twentieth-century literature, was born on September 11, 1885, in a mining village in Nottinghamshire, England. His father was an illiterate coal miner, his mother a genteel schoolteacher determined to… More about D.H. Lawrence
"Nobody concerned with the novel in our century can afford not to read it." —Lawrence Durrell
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