Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness…It thrilled inside her body, in her womb, somewhere, till she felt she must jump into water and swim to get away from it; a mad restlessness. It made her heart beat violently for no reason…
D.H. Lawrence’s infamous novel was first published privately in 1928 in Italy, and then subsequently the following year in France and Australia. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books. Penguin famously won the case, and quickly sold 3 million copies.
Lawrence’s novel is said by some 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. Although some critics have said that the fling of Lady Ottoline Morrell with “Tiger”, a young stonemason who came to carve plinths for her garden statues, also influenced the story.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Published by Signet Classics in 1962, illustrated by Tupshur