Lady Chatterley's Lover [antikvár]

To the Reader: As publishers, we have been associated with Lady Chatter-ley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence for a long time. In Germany, before World War II, Kurt Enoch, president of The New American Library, was connected with its publication in a paperbound English language edition especially endorsed by Frieda Lawrence. Early in the first year of post-war publishing, under the Penguin imprint in the United States, Kurt Enoch and Victor Weybright arranged, under license from Alfred A. Knopf^ Inc., a reprint that has sold well over two million copies of the then only authorized American edition, which, according to Lawrence's estate, had the approval of the author. The present edition, a complete and authorized reprint of the unexpurgated text of the definitive version originally lished in English, in Italy, was made available in the United States for the first time with the complete blessing of the Lawrence estate and its literary executor. Others, not conforming with the protocols of publishing, brought out copies of the work without the customary contractual arrangements with the representatives of the author. The fact that a great twentieth-century author is dead did not for a moment impel us to evade our honorable responsibilities to his estate, and to the tireless friend and agent, as well as literary executor, Laurence Pollinger, in London, who was charged with the publishing management of Lawrence's writings. This book, at the time of going to press, was the only American edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover, unexpurgated, which could be described as authorized by the author's estate. We take pride in introducing to the wide public of everyday people, whose vitality D. H. Lawrence cherished so dearly, Ae unexpurgated edition which for over fifty years has enjoyed the admiration of critics throughout the world. The expurgated edition heretofore published by The New American Library was a complete reprint, not an abridgment, of the-authorized American edition first issued by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1932. For many years it was not only the sole CHAPTER I Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she had realised that one must live and leam. She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was twenty-nine. His hold on life was marveUous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again. For two years he remained in the doctor's hands. Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever. This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby HaU, the family "seat". His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet. Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could. He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden 5