Women in Love by LAWRENCE, D.H

New York: Privately Printed for Subscriber's Only, 1920. A Lucid Account of English Society Before the First World War
And a Brilliant Evocation of the Inexorable Power of Human Desire

LAWRENCE, D.H. Women in Love. New York: Privately Printed for Subscriber's Only [by Thomas Seltzer], 1920.

First edition Limited to 1250 numbered copies of which this is # 52.

Large octavo (9 5/8 x 6 1/4 inches; 245 x 160 mm.). [4], [1]- 536, [4, blank] pp.

Publisher's dark blue buckram, spine with four shallow raised bands, lettered in gilt in second compartment. Gilt on spine a little dull, slight stain on front paste-down and free endpaper from loosely inserted newspaper clippings regarding the 1970 film "The Virgin and the Gypsy".

The New York edition preceded the London edition by seven months.

Widely regarded as D. H. Lawrence's greatest novel, Women in Love is both a lucid account of English society before the First World War, and a brilliant evocation of the inexorable power of human desire. This was Lawrence's most ambitious novel, and his last comprehensive attempt to write for his country, as it examined and characterized contemporary anxiety and conflict. Women in Love continues where The Rainbow left off, with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships, Ursula's with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, and Gudrun's with industrialist Gerald Crich, and later with a sculptor, Loerke. Quintessentially modernist, Women in Love is one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative and unsettling works.

After years of misunderstandings, accusations of duplicity, and hurried letters, Thomas Seltzer finally published the first edition of Women in Love in New York City, on 9 November 1920. This had come after three drawn out years of delays and revisions. This first limited edition (1,250 books) was available only to subscribers, due to the controversy caused by Lawrence's previous work, The Rainbow (1915). Originally, the two books were written as parts of a single novel, but the publisher had decided to publish them separately and in rapid succession. The first book's treatment of sexuality was frank for the mores of the time, and, after an obscenity trial, the book was banned in the UK for 11 years, although it was available in the US. The publisher then backed out of publishing the second book in the UK, so Women in Love first appeared in the US. Martin Secker published the first trade edition of Women in Love in London, on 10 June 1921. Lawrence spent more than three years seeking a publisher undaunted by the prosecution of Women in Love's similarly frank prequel, The Rainbow (1915). Eventually, the author had the book privately printed abroad by a small avant-garde publisher, Thomas Seltzer, a strategy he later used to great effect for Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928).

David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation and industrialization, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct. Several of his novels, Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover, were the subject of censorship trials for their radical portrayals of sexuality and use of explicit language.

Roberts & Poplowski A15a.