LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; an unexpurgated edition could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Inky Stephensen's Mandrake Press in 1929.) The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable words and temporarily banned in the United States and the United Kingdom for violation of obscenity laws; both bans were lifted in 1959 and 1960, respectively.

The story is said to have originated from events in Lawrence's own unhappy domestic life, and he took inspiration for the settings of the book from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, where he grew up. According to some critics, the fling of Lady Ottoline Morrell with "Tiger", a young stonemason who came to carve plinths for her garden statues, also influenced the story. Lawrence at one time considered calling the novel Tenderness and made significant alterations to the text and story in the process of its composition. It has been published in three different versions.

The story is pretty basic. Lord Chatterley returns from World War I paralyzed waist down. His new bride Lady Chatterley cares for him after his injury but slowly starts to feel stifled, and longs for something. She soon finds satisfaction in a brief affair with her husband’s friend. When that affair fizzles out, she has an affair with the gamekeeper who maintains Lord Chatterley’s woods. What happens next forms the bulk of the story.