Judith has her engagement broken when her family and the Mainwarings find themselves on opposing sides of the English Civil War. In those days, you know, you could solve everything with an ellipsis.’įorever Amber, opens in 1644 with Judith Marsh who has been engaged since birth to her neighbour, John Mainwaring, heir to the Earl of Rosswood. ‘I wrote only two sexy passages,’ she remarked, ‘and my publishers took both of them out. Winsor denied that her book was particularly daring, and said that she had no interest in explicit scenes. He added: ‘The references to women’s bosoms and other parts of their anatomy were so numerous I did not even attempt to count them.’ The book was publicly burned in that state! The first was Massachusetts, whose attorney general cited ‘70 references to sexual intercourse, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, 7 abortions, and 10 descriptions of women undressing in front of men’ as reasons for banning the novel. While many reviewers “praised the story for its relevance, comparing Amber’s fortitude during the plague and fire to that of the women who held hearth and home together through the blitzes of World War II”, others condemned it for its blatant sexual references.įourteen US states banned the book as pornography. There is nothing more enticing than a book that has been banned. Kathleen Winsor published Forever Amber, the 972-page historical romance novel in October of 1944.
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