The Virgin and the Gipsy
Sep 2011 · Vintage
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An electrifying short novel published posthumously set in a small village in the English countryside and tells the story of a sheltered rector's daughter whose life is changed when she is introduced to a world of unfettered passion.
The Virgin and the Gipsy was discovered in France after D. H. Lawrence's death in 1930. Immediately recognized as a masterpiece in which Lawrence had distilled and purified his ideas about sexuality and morality, The Virgin and the Gipsy has become a classic and is one of Lawrence's most electrifying short novels.
Set in a small village in the English countryside, this is the story of a secluded, sensitive rector's daughter who yearns for meaning beyond the life to which she seems doomed. When she meets a handsome young gipsy whose life appears different from hers in every way, she is immediately smitten and yet still paralyzed by her own fear and social convention. Not until a natural catastrophe suddenly, miraculously sweeps away the world as she knew it does a new world of passion open for her. Lawrence's spirit is infused by all his tenderness, passion, and knowledge of the human soul.
The Virgin and the Gipsy was discovered in France after D. H. Lawrence's death in 1930. Immediately recognized as a masterpiece in which Lawrence had distilled and purified his ideas about sexuality and morality, The Virgin and the Gipsy has become a classic and is one of Lawrence's most electrifying short novels.
Set in a small village in the English countryside, this is the story of a secluded, sensitive rector's daughter who yearns for meaning beyond the life to which she seems doomed. When she meets a handsome young gipsy whose life appears different from hers in every way, she is immediately smitten and yet still paralyzed by her own fear and social convention. Not until a natural catastrophe suddenly, miraculously sweeps away the world as she knew it does a new world of passion open for her. Lawrence's spirit is infused by all his tenderness, passion, and knowledge of the human soul.
An electrifying short novel published posthumously set in a small village in the English countryside and tells the story of a sheltered rector's daughter whose life is changed when she is introduced to a world of unfettered passion.
The Virgin and the Gipsy was discovered in France after D. H....
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Monkfish2 Monkfish2
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April 12, 2026
Written in 1926 and published posthumously in 1930, Lawrence’s novella is a fierce, waterlogged strike against English civilization. In a grim rectory, the toad-like "Mater" and the hollow Reverend Saywell preside over a home of spiritual asphyxiation. Into this domestic horror return daughters Lucille and Yvette, dangerously alive among people dedicated to extinguishing that vitality. Yvette, a dreamy heroine, drifts toward a Romani man with the inevitability of water finding a crack in stone. While the era’s racial framing sits uneasily today, Lawrence’s dismantling of respectability remains sharp. Saved by vicious comedy and a terrifying flood sequence, the work earns its symbolic weight through physical conviction. Lawrence called it a love story, but it is ultimately the body’s ancient argument with the institution. A short, visceral book with long consequences. ❤️ 🇮🇱
About the author
D. H. Lawrence, whose fiction has had a profound influence on twentieth-century literature, was born on September 11, 1885, in a mining village in Nottinghamshire, England. His father was an illiterate coal miner, his mother a genteel schoolteacher determined to lift her children out of the working class. His parents' unhappy marriage and his mother's strong emotional claims on her son later became the basis for Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913), one of the most important autobiographical novels of this century. In 1915, his masterpiece, The Rainbow, which like it's companion novel Women In Love (1920) dealt frankly with sex, was suppressed as indecent a month after its publication. Aaron's Road (1922); Kangaroo (1923), set in Australia; and The Plumed Serpent (1926), set in Mexico, were all written during Lawrence's travels in search of political and emotional refuge and healthful climate. In 1928, already desperately ill, Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterly's Lover. Banned as pornographic, the unexpurgated edition was not allowed legal circulation in Britain until 1960. D. H. Lawrence called his life, marked by struggle, frustration, and despair "a savage enough pilgrimage." He died on March 2, 1930, at the age of 44, in Vence, France.
D. H. Lawrence, whose fiction has had a profound influence on twentieth-century literature, was born on September 11, 1885, in a mining village in Nottinghamshire, England. His father was an illiterate coal miner, his mother a genteel schoolteacher determined to lift her children out of the worki...
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