Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Introduction by John Sutherland

Famously banned for indecency, Lawrence’s final novel is one of the most notorious and passionate love stories in literature.

Constance Reid, Lady Chatterley, is a young woman trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to an aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralyzed. After her husband demands that she provide him with an heir, she enters into a liaison with their gamekeeper, a working-class man named Oliver Mellors. As their illicit relationship grows in tenderness, mutual respect, and sensual passion, Constance discovers that true fulfillment requires a real connection of both mind and body. Shocking to its original audience for its cross-class romance as well as for its explicit depictions of sex, the novel has long been hailed as the summit of Lawrence’s artistic achievement and one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century.