Forever Amber (Rediscovered Classics)
by Kathleen Winsor
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kathleen WinsorForeword: Barbara Taylor Bradford
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-09-01
ISBN: 1556524048
Number of pages: 976
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Book Reviews of Forever Amber (Rediscovered Classics)
Book Review: FOREVER A CLASSIC, IS FOREVER AMBER
Summary: 5 Stars
If you have not read this or if you were thinking about reading this book, i cannot stress enough...how important it is in timeless literature! This book is a long one, HOWEVER! do-not be discouraged by the sheer volume...for when you reach that last page you will wish they hadn't cut so much out when Winsor put it in print in 1944. I know that most book stores label it as 'romance', but honestly its not about love its about a woman growning and surviving in medieval London, where women were property. Its special to me because I have a first edition that my grandmother read a few years after it was released, and she in turn gave it to my mother to read when she came of age, and now it is mine and I will pass it to my daughter. If you are interested in history ,people's lives in medieval times through fire and plague,or politics and court fashion and liveilyhood, READ THIS!!! This is one of the ''10 best books ever written" in my list!(and i own over 5,000 books classic and banned) For years to come I know this story, Amber's story, will stay with me and remind me to think back...What Would Amber Do? Oddly enough while talking to my grandmother last week,(i finished the book in 6 days),she said what my mother told me:"this book stayed with me still and i havent read it in 50 years... it will always stay with you." Below I pasted a portion of Kathleen's Obit.
"Kathleen Winsor"
Author of the bestselling Forever Amber, has died Wednesday June 4, 2003 aged 83. Her 1944 novel, which was made into a high-profile film directed by Otto Preminger, was a thousand-page fictional romp through Restoration fashion, politics, bedrooms and public disasters, among them the plague and the Great Fire of London. It was a love letter to a London she had read about in Defoe and Pepys, but had never seen.
Forever Amber was published in New York by Macmillan, the firm that had sold 4m copies of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind in 1936. Alert to the possibilities of Winsor's manuscript, which ran to 2,500 pages, their editors set about carving something commercially viable from the sprawling story.
In a pre-emptive move to scare Hollywood away from such a sexy novel, the book was denounced by the powerful Hays Office, which offered guidance on morals to the studio bosses. Combing the text, the Massachusetts attorney-general found 70 references to sexual intercourse, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, seven abortions, 10 scenes in which women undressed in front of men who were not their husbands, and nearly 50 "miscellaneous objectionable passages" - and announced that the book would be banned (an action overturned on appeal). Other states joined in the condemnation, and the critics, joyless and hostile, were led by Orville Prescott, who denounced the novel as "a crude and superficial glorification of a courtesan".
Winsor denied that her book was particularly daring, and said that she had no interest in "anatomical scenes". "I wrote only two sexy passages," she remarked, "and my publishers took both of them out. They put in ellipses instead. In those days, you could solve everything with an ellipse..."
Of course, the bans were coded messages to the American reading public, which concluded that the book sounded like fun. It was, and 100,000 copies were snapped up in the first week. Altogether, Forever Amber sold more than 3mil. copies and was translated into 16 languages. It was the bestselling US novel in the 1940s. Books about the war, such as John Hersey's A Bell For Adano and Ernie Pyle's Brave Men, did not stand a chance against its narrative verve, colour and refreshing absence of earnestness.
Preminger's film adaptation, given a moral ending on the insistence of Darryl F Zanuck, was thin stuff, however. Linda Darnell was brought in to replace the British actor Peggy Cummins when it was found that she did not do blowzy with sufficient conviction. The screenplay was written by Philip Dunne and Ring Lardner Jr, who was later blacklisted and sent to prison as one of the Hollywood 10.
Born in a small town in Minnesota, Winsor was raised in Berkeley, California, where she attended university. At the age of 17, she married a campus football star, Robert Herwig. It was his senior honours thesis on Charles II that attracted her to the Restoration period, and she later claimed to have read 356 books on the subject.
For an unknown and unpublished young author, she was as determined and well organised as any of her fictional heroines. She began Forever Amber in February 1940, at the age of 20, and the novel went through five drafts over the next four years. Her manuscripts, held at the University of Texas, include each one carefully dated, as well as abundant notes on her reading, on fashion, and an outsized map of Restoration London.
Summary of Forever Amber (Rediscovered Classics)
Abandoned pregnant and penniless on the teeming streets of London, 16-year-old Amber St. Clare manages, by using her wits, beauty, and courage, to climb to the highest position a woman could achieve in Restoration England?that of favorite mistress of the Merry Monarch, Charles II. From whores and highwaymen to courtiers and noblemen, from events such as the Great Plague and the Fire of London to the intimate passions of ordinary?and extraordinary?men and women, Amber experiences it all. But throughout her trials and escapades, she remains, in her heart, true to the one man she really loves, the one man she can never have. Frequently compared to Gone with the Wind, Forever Amber is the other great historical romance, outselling every other American novel of the 1940s?despite being banned in Boston for its sheer sexiness. A book to read and reread, this edition brings back to print an unforgettable romance and a timeless masterpiece.
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