This novel by D. H. Lawrence was first published in 1928 and subsequently banned. Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of the most subversive novels in English Literature. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy, with assistance from Pino Orioli; an unexpurgated edition could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Inky Stephensen's Mandrake Press in 1929.) The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable words. Lady Chatterley's Lover was inspired by the long-standing affair between Frieda, Lawrence's German wife, and an Italian peasant who eventually became her third husband; Lawrence's struggle with sexual impotence; and the circumstances of his and Frieda's courtship and the early years of their marriage.
