Lady Chatterley’s Lover

About the Book

What happens when a cultured bohemian feels stifled in a sexless marriage to her invalid husband? She takes on a lover . . . Constance Chatterley, the wife of Sir Clifford Chatterley, finds herself trapped in a loveless and lifeless marriage. When her husband urges her to have a liaison with someone from their own class, Constance gets attracted to a man from the working class instead—an Oliver Mellors who is her husband’s gamekeeper—and takes him as her lover. In a society that reveres class difference, will an aristocrat woman be allowed her torrid love affair with a lowly man? A novel notorious for being pornographic and way ahead of its time, Lady Chatterley’s Lover brewed up quite a controversy when it was first published in 1928. It was only decades later, in 1960, that its unexpurgated edition could be openly published in the UK.

About the Author
David Herbert Lawrence was the fourth child of Arthur John Lawrence, a barely literate miner, and Lydia, a former pupil teacher from a humble background. Lawrence spent his formative years in the coal mining town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. His working-class background and the tensions between his parents provided the raw material for a number of his early works. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was his last major novel, and reinforced his unsavoury reputation. It was initially published in private editions in Florence and Paris.