Books

Florence: Privately Printed by the Tipografia Giuntina, 1928. 4to 2 p.l., 365, [1] pp., [1] leaf (blank). FIRST EDITION. ONE OF 1,000 COPIES, SIGNED BY LAWRENCE. Original publisher's mulberry-colored paper boards, edges untrimmed, note chips to spine, else quite lovely. Roberts A-42a. This is simply a good tpo very gppd copy of one of the major works of British literature in the 20th century. Although poetical in the general treatment of its subject, this book is a landmark in the history of the English novel in that it depicts for the first time in a studied and unabashedly direct way the concrete sexual experience, accompanied by the uninhibited language of real life. The book was first published in Italy because of obstacles erected by the censor in Britain, where it did not circulate in unexpurgated form until 1960.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published privately in 1928 in Italy and in 1929 in France. It portrays a young married woman, Constance Reid (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class barrister husband has been paralyzed and rendered impotent. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The class difference between the couple highlights a major motif of the novel which is the unfair dominance of intellectuals over the working class. The book is a meditation on the necessity for a balance between the body and the mind and the destructive effects that industrialization and modernization can have on both.