Books

First Edition. 8vo, publisher's original blue-green cloth lettered in gilt on the spine and in blind on the upper cover. vii, [1], 463, [1], [4 ads.] pp. A very good and well preserved copy, light evidence of age or shelving, the gilt on the spine panel still in good order, the text-block clean and only lightly mellowed, the binding strong. FIRST EDITION. One of the author's best, the book focuses particularly on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfillment within the confining structures of English social life. Lawrence's 1920 novel Women in Love is a sequel to The Rainbow. The book starts with a description of the Brangwen dynasty, then deals with how Tom Brangwen, one of several brothers, fell in love with a Polish refugee and widow, Lydia. The next part of the book deals with Lydia's daughter by her first husband, Anna, and her destructive, battle-driven relationship with her husband, Will, the son of one of Tom's brothers. The last and most extended part of the book, and also probably the most famous, then deals with Will and Anna's daughter, Ursula, and her struggle to find fulfillment for her passionate, spiritual, and sensual nature against the confines of the increasingly materialist and conformist society around her. She experiences a same-sex relationship with a teacher, and a passionate but ultimately doomed love affair with Anton Skrebensky, a British soldier of Polish ancestry. At the end of the book, having failed to find her fulfillment in Skrebensky, she has a vision of a rainbow towering over the Earth, promising a new dawn for humanity: "She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven." Lawrence's frank treatment of sexual desire, and the part it plays within relationships as a natural and even spiritual force of life, caused The Rainbow to be prosecuted in an obscenity trial at Bow Street Magistrates' Court on 13 November 1915, as a result of which 1,011 copies were seized and burnt. After this ban, it became unavailable in Britain for 11 years, although editions were available in the United States. wiki.