The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories

D. H. Lawrence’s best-known late fictions are presented in this volume, which is dominated by two powerful novellas, The Virgin and the Gipsy and The Escaped Cock (also known as The Man Who Died). In the first, a young woman from a restrictive English rectory discovers further dimensions to life through her contact with a gipsy; in the second, an unnamed man – in fact Lawrence’s vision of Christ – is resurrected and escapes from his tomb. Both novellas deal with the themes of escape and seexual awakening, which are echoed in the four short stories and three fragments also collected here. This edition restores Lawrence’s final texts, before the changes introduced by censorship, mistakes in transmission and various other forms of interference, with variants recorded. The introduction traces the history of the stories, while the notes offer help with allusions, contexts and other points of potential difficulty or interest.

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