Lady Chatterley

Last month Manhattan's small, exclusive Dial Press announced that it would soon publish the original version of one of the century's most blush-provoking literary works. This hitherto unpublished draft of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the late David Herbert Lawrence's distinguished novel about a titled lady who deserted her aristocratic but impotent husband for the family gamekeeper, will be issued next month in a first printing of 15,000 copies at $2.75 the copy.

Readers sniffed the wind for whiffs of literary must. The only Lady Chatterleys that most of them knew were the high-flavored version published in Italy (1928), (it was banned in the U.S. and Britain but circulated in pirated editions), and a deodorized U.S. edition (published by Knopf) which was scrupulously scrubbed clean of practically everything but the commas.

The new Lady Chatterley was discovered last spring by staid Author Esther Forbes (Paul Revere, and The World He Lived In, TIME, June 29, 1942) when she visited Santa Fe Anthropologist William Hougland. Hougland is the unofficial literary agent of Lawrence's widow, Frieda von Richthofen Lawrence.* He told Author Forbes about the present draft of Lady Chatterley which had remained in Lawrence's bound notebooks for 18 years.

But logophiles who tear through the Dial Press's version in search of dirty words will be disappointed. The new Lady Chatterley is the first (and tamest) of three complete versions which Lawrence made before he worked himself into his frenetic study of sex. In all of Dial Press's new version there are only four dirty words which the publishers have printed like this: d...y w...s.

* Cousin of Germany's World War I flying ace, Manfred von Richthofen.

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