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LAWRENCE, David Herbert (1885-1930) Lettre autographe signée « DH Lawrence » à George Conway Hôtel Beau Rivage, Bandol, 29 décembre 1928, 2 p. in-8°, en anglais Enveloppe autographe timbrée et oblitérée Quelques infimes décharges d'encre, toute petite tache sans atteinte au texte, ancienne trace de trombone Rare lettre de l'écrivain au sujet de son scandaleux roman L'Amant de Lady Chatterley « Dear Conway, I am most distressed to learn that your copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover have not turned up. They were sent by registered book post long ago and surely the Mexican govt. would not confiscate them, as the U.S.A. customs do! I will ask Orioli to send you the registration counterfoil, to see if you can trace them. If not you must have others, if any remain. Orioli has very few, I know they may be all ordered. But one at least I'll rescue for you. But we must find out what became of the others. The book is selling at $50. in USA- and anything over £5. here in Europe so you see it is quite a loss. Your Christmas card came this morning too and how pretty it is! and I had a little book from you which I thought was charming. We have given up the Villa Mirenda, and are at a bit of loose end, wondering where to go and where to live next. I think in about a fortnight we shall go to Spain, and try that. But we might go to New Mexico for the summer, so if ever you are passing, make sure first if we are there and do stop and see us if we are. I was ill last year but I am much better now and getting to be myself again. Some people were much scandalized by Lady C. but many took it in the right spirit, and remain staunch to me. I do hope you'll get your copies, and will read it and not be shocked Mrs Conway too. We have lived too long to be shocked by words any more. How are you both? I think of you often, and quake sometimes for you, seeing the Mexican news. But you'll go on forever, I feel, running those trams and deciphering Spanish MS. Very many greetings from us both D.H. Lawrence » Quand D.H. Lawrence et sa femme Frieda arrivent à Bandol le 17 novembre 1928, L'amant de Lady Chatterley est sorti des presses de Florence depuis moins d'un an. Écrit en 1927 dans la même ville, à la villa Mirenda, le roman est interdit de vente au Royaume-Uni au motif de "publication obscène" : Les scènes érotiques explicites, le vocabulaire considéré comme grossier et la différence de classe sociale entre les amants (un ouvrier et une aristocrate) sont autant de raisons pour les censeurs de le faire interdire de publication. L'édition est de fait vendue sous le manteau. Le succès est immense. Le 18 janvier 1929, Lawrence apprend par son agent Laurence Pollinger que 18 exemplaires de Lady Chatterly's Lover ont été saisis au Royaume-Uni. L'interdiction affecte douloureusement le romancier. Atteint d'une tuberculose pulmonaire, il s'éteint un an plus tard, le 2 mars 1930. Ce n'est qu'en 1960, 30 ans après sa mort, que l'ouvrage est autorisé de publication au Royaume-Uni. George Robert Graham Conway et son épouse, Anne Elizabeth, font partie des amis anglais de l'écrivain. Ils le rencontrent au Nouveau-Mexique en 1925. Conway, ingénieur spécialisé dans l'industrie du transport ferroviaire, fut l'un des plus grands collectionneurs de son temps de documents sur la colonisation espagnole en Amérique. Provenance : Ancienne collection P.E.R. Bibliographie : The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, éd. K. Sagar & J. T. Boulton, t. VII, p. 108

Autograph letter signed from Lawrence to Allen W. Steele of the book wholesalers William Jackson Ltd, requesting that they return to the bearer of the letter, Enid Hilton, over 70 copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover which they had ordered and subsequently rejected. Privately printed in Florence in 1928 with the help of the Florentine bookseller Pino Orioli, Lady Chatterley's Lover proved deeply controversial due to its frank eroticism. It was this controversy which led to William Jackson cancelling their order, fearing the rumours of a potential raid by the police, and forcing Lawrence to recover the copies. The incident is related in the Cambridge Biography of D. H. Lawrence: "The difficulties began in July when a London firm with a bulk order (William Jackson Ltd) looked at one of the more than seventy copies they had received and decided, on both legal and moral grounds, that on no account did they want to be involved. Because they had asked Lawrence where they should now send the books, he needed someone in London who could collect and store them for him (to tell the firm to send them back to Florence risked attracting more attention than he thought wise). The person he turned to was Enid Hilton. Lawrence was nervous about involving an essentially non-literary person in his literary affairs, someone from the more 'ordinary' world of his early friends and family, particularly as there was some risk of her being compromised if the authorities did decide to act against his novel. But the enthusiastic efficiency with which Enid collected the books, and then distributed them to individual subscribers as further orders came in, fully justified his choice" (David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922-1930, p. 426). That Enid Hilton - who hid the books in her guest room - was able to distribute the copies to other customers shows the demand for the book, which proved very lucrative for Lawrence, even though censorship meant that the unexpurgated text was not published in the UK until 1960. The letter reads in full: "Dear Sir, Will you please deliver to the bearer of this note [Enid Hilton] all the copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover that were sent to you from Florence before you cancelled your order. There should be either seventy-two or seventy-four copies in all - Mr. Orioli says sixty-six copies by registered book mail, and one parcel-post package of eight copies - making seventy-four. But elsewhere he said seventy-two. With thanks for your courtesy, yours faithfully D. H. Lawrence". Published in the Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. VI, pp. 476-477. Single page, quarto. A few tiny holes and very light creasing, overall in excellent condition.

Full Description: LAWRENCE, D.H. Lady Chatterley's Lover. [Florence]: Privately Printed [by the Tipografia Giuntina], 1928. First edition. Limited to 1,000 numbered copies, signed by the author. This being number 773. Octavo (9 x 6 1/4 inches; 227 x 157 mm). [4], 365, [3, blank] pp. Original brown paper boards with printed paper spine label. Front cover printed in black with the Lawrence phoenix. Unopened. A fine copy. Housed in a quarter brown morocco clamshell case . Available by subscription only in this private Florence printing and banned in England and America for obscenity, Lady Chatterley's Lover was Lawrence's most ambitious attempt to present his vision of the mystery and wonder of sex. Lawrence described the book as "beautiful and tender and frail as the naked self," but in England and the United States police and customs officials routinely confiscated and destroyed any copies they could find and prosecuted the booksellers. Lady Chatterley's Lover was not available in the U.S. until Grove Press brought the matter to court in 1959, over 30 years after the publication of the first edition. Roberts A42a. HBS 69119. $12,500.