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.
Front cover of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, Penguin edition, 1960
L’Amant de Lady Chatterley – French edition 1993
Penguin Australia 2011
An abridged paperback version published by ACE in 1959
L’Amant de Lady Chatterley – French edition 1985
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Published by Signet Classics in 1962, illustrated by Tupshur
Lady Chatterley Library edition
Grove Press First Edition 1959
Signet edition 1946, cover art by Tony Varady
Paperback version of the Grove Press Edition
New American Library of World Literature, New York 1959
Heinemann first complete and unexpurgated edition, 1960.
Signet 10th printing 1958
Colombian edition 1981
1946 2nd print cover art by Robert Jonas Penguin
Lady Chatterley’s Lover privately printed in Florence, 1928
Signet 610 (Jan., 1950). Sixth Printing with New Cover
Pegasus Press, Paris, 1938
New York pirate edition 1928
Penguin Classics Published 1st June 2006
Signet 610 (Jan., 1950). Sixth Printing with New Cover
Penguin edition introduced by Richard Hoggart
50th Anniversary edition by Penguin
Penguin essential illustrated by Lucy McLauchlan
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
by D. H. Lawrence
(Penguin Classics 60th
anniversary hardback)
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Art Direction: Paul Smith
Design: Alan Aboud