Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence’s final novel, was published in a limited English-language edition in Florence (1928) and in Paris (1929). Published in expurgated form in England in 1932, the full text was finally published in New York City (1959) and London (1960), when it became the subject of a landmark obscenity trial that focused on the novel’s taboo sexual terms. As the result of these controversies, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is best-known for its sexual explicitness, but the novel is this and much, much more. The love affair between Lady Constance Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, her gamekeeper, takes place against the catastrophe of World War I, the depredations of industrialism, the rapacity of capitalism, and how these and other modern developments have eviscerated the natural instincts of men and women to love deeply and well. Profoundly radical in its critique of modernism, we’ll discuss, nearly 100 years later, whether the novel retains its revolutionary qualities – and shines light on our own 21^st century concerns.

Reading comprises about 80 pages per class.