Seen by Lawrence as his most successful book, but subject to the initial prudery and incomprehension that met most of his fiction, Women in Love charts the regenerative and destructive aspects of human passion as Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen - who first appeared in The Rainbow - conduct relationships with Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin. Set against a backdrop of a world consuming itself in war, the novel creates an instructive vision of humanity's poignant dance with life and death.

This text is the famous 'first' Women In Love, Lawrence's preferred and unexpurgated version, which was rejected by every publisher who saw it because of the banning of The Rainbow in 1915. More positive in tone than the revised version published later, with different central relationships and a radically different ending, it is now viewed by many as his greatest work.

'Women in Love is a work of genius. It contains characters which are masterpieces of pure creation.' – New Statesman

'What beauties the book contains! There are many pages in it so saturated with warm and lovely intimacies that one reads absorbed.' – The Guardian

'He’s an intoxicator… Has there ever been anyone like him for bringing places and people so vividly to life?' – Doris Lessing

'The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.' – E.M. Forster

'The greatest writer of the century.' – Philip Larkin

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Read an excerpt from The First Women in Love

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