Discovered in France after D.H.Laurence's death, The Virgin and the Gipsy is an extraordinary masterpiece of eroticism. A vivid legacy of Laurence's most mature theories of morality, this rare and disturbing novel describes a love affair between a sensitive, secluded rector's daughter and a hedonistic young gipsy.

"D.H.Laurence places sex at the heart of life; without sex there would be no life...[The Virgin and the Gipsy] is strikingly original; one will search novels in vain for a parallel."----The New York Times

Harrassed by authorities for his alleged obscenity, regarded by some as a prophet and legend. D.H.Laurence was, above all, a deeply serious artist who drew on psychoanalysis, theosophy, history and archaeology to define the impoverishment of modern civilization. The search for a full, intense life, lived in harmony with deep, instinctive energies, dominates his novels, poems and critical works. It also inspired his travels through southern Europe, the South Seas and Mexico in quest of primitive cultures and ideal societies. His symbolic subtlety in exposing the forces which deny life, and his insistence on the central importance of sex. revolutionized the 20th-century novel.