Forever Amber [antikvár]

When F orever A mber was first published in 1944 it created a sensation and catapulted its author to instant fame. The novel sold 100,000 copies in its first week, and Kathleen Winsor became a household name. Considered bawdy and immoral, the book was banned in Boston, and the Hays office pronounced that it was too impure for the movies in its present state. But in the end it sold over two million copies in hardcover, and it did become a movie starring Linda Darnell and Cornei Wilde. I first read F orever Amber when I was a teenager. I remember that I could not put it down. In fact, I read it so quickly that I imme-diately reread it to be certain I hadn't missed anything important. At the time, all of my girlfriends had their noses buried in it. Like me, they found it compulsive and compelling reading. I became a fan of the author's and read all her other novéis as they were published over the years, from Star Money to Calais. But Forever Amber has remained a particular favorite. When I was asked to write a foreword to this new édition, I picked up the novel again and once more discovered it was a genuine page-turner; it had lost nothing over the years. Time had not dimmed it, nor had the changing fashions in fiction diminished it. The book remains a smashing read, as compelling now as it was all those years ago. What struck me most forcibly was the enormous amount of research the author had done—impeccable research that cannot be bettered, in my opinion, and certainly worthy of a historian. Intrigued by the depth and enormity of the research, I inquired as to how the author had gone about it. I discovered that when Kathleen Winsor was married (in 1938) to her first husband, Robert Herwig, she became fascinated by the books he was then reading for his college theme on Charles II. She began to read them as well,