Synopses & Reviews
One of the most extraordinary literary works of the twentieth century,
Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in England and the United States after its initial publication in 1928. The unexpurgated edition did not appear in America until 1959, after one of the most spectacular legal battles in publishing history.
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.
Review
No one ever wrote better about the power struggles of sex and love.
Doris Lessing
Synopsis
The great philosophers final writings on the real and the idealIn Timaeus and Critias, Plato presents his ultimate view on the composition of the universe. Taking the form of dialogues among Socrates, Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates, these two works explore the origins of the universe, life, and humanity, and have remained a paradigm of science for two thousand years. Desmond Lees translation preserves the lucidity of the original, and his appendix on Atlantis is an invaluable source of information on this perennial myth. Timaeus and Critias is an essential text for students of philosophy and classics as well as literature and mythology.
Synopsis
Banned and vindicated, condemned and lauded, Lady Chatterley's Lover is D.H. Lawrence's seminal novel of illicit passion and forbidden desire.
Lady Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the Sir Clifford. Paralysed in the First World War, Sir Clifford is unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, and encourages her instead to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to Oliver Mellors, her husband's gamekeeper, with whom she embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled existence. Can she find true love with Mellors, despite the vast gulf between their positions in society? One of the most controversial novels in English literature, Lady Chatterley's Lover is an erotically charged and psychologically powerful depiction of adult relationships.
In her introduction Doris Lessing discusses the influence of Lawrence's sexual politics, his relationship with his wife Frieda and his attitude towards the First World War. Using the complete and restored text of the Cambridge edition, this volume includes a new chronology and further reading by Paul Poplawski and notes by Michael Squires.
Edited with notes by Michael Squires and an introduction by Doris Lessing.
'A brave and important book, passionate and wildly ambitious'
Independent on Sunday
'A masterpiece'
Guardian
About the Author
The son of a miner, the prolific novelist, poet, and travel writer David Herbert Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in 1885. He attended Nottingham University and found employment as a schoolteacher. His first novel,
The White Peacock, was published in 1911, the same year his beloved mother died and he quit teaching after contracting pneumonia. The next year Lawrence published
Sons and Lovers and ran off to Germany with Frieda Weekley, his former tutor’s wife. His masterpieces
The Rainbow and
Women in Love were completed in quick succession, but the first was suppressed as indecent and the second was not published until 1920. Lawrence’s lyrical writings challenged convention, promoting a return to an ideal of nature where sex is seen as a sacrament. In 1928 Lawrence’s final novel,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was banned in England and the United States for indecency. He died of tuberculosis in 1930 in Venice.
Doris Lessing, whose many writings include The Golden Notebook, has received numerous awards, including Spain's Prince of Asturias Prize.