Lady Chatterley’s legacy

DH Lawrence’s ambitions for his novel may not have been fully realised, but the reading public have much to thank him for

Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They’ve got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime. I could curse for hours and hours — God help me.

– Lawrence on Heinemann’s rejection of the manuscript of Sons and Lovers, in a letter to Edward Garnett, July 3, 1912