Lady Chatterley's Lover

by D. H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) caused a scandal due to its explicit sex scenes, including previously banned four-letter words, and because the lovers crossed class lines: she was an aristocrat, he a working-class man. The story likely originated from Lawrence's own unhappy domestic life, and he took inspiration for the settings of the book from Ilkeston in Derbyshire where he lived for a short time. "Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically."
[Note: this novel is in the public domain in the U.S. because it was legally published without a copyright notice between 1923 - 1977.
Pictured: First Penguin edition, 1960, Harmondsworth, England.]

Chapter I

Chapter II