The Montparnasse hotel where D. H. Lawrence lived from 12 March to 7 April 1929 while he looked for a publisher willing to print Lady Chatterley's Lover cheaply enough to undercut the pirates. It is the only address in Paris that carries a plaque to him.
Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in Florence in July 1928 in an edition of a thousand copies, printed by a jobbing Italian printer who spoke no English and set the type without knowing what the book said. Lawrence sold it by subscription, direct to readers, because no established house would touch it. Within months it was being pirated on both sides of the Atlantic.
Piracy was not a marginal irritation. An unauthorised edition could ask three hundred francs or more precisely because the book was hard to get, and every copy sold was money the author never saw. Lawrence's answer was to flood the market himself: a plain, cheap Paris edition at a price the pirates could not undercut, sold openly enough to make their editions pointless. It was a commercial decision taken by a dying man who wanted the income while he could still use it.
The Huxleys pointed him at Paris. French law did not police foreign-language books the way British and American law did, and the city already carried a set of small English-language presses that existed for exactly this reason. He arrived from Bandol on the Mediterranean coast on 12 March.
The month did not begin well. On 15 March he learned that Frank Groves, who had offered to help him produce a Paris edition, had instead published a pirated one, printed in Germany. The man he had been talking to about beating the pirates turned out to be one of them.
He went to Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Company on rue de l'Odéon. She had published James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 and was the obvious person to ask. She declined. By her own account she had had enough of controversy and did not want a reputation as a publisher of erotic literature. She appears to have sent him on to Titus.
Between the negotiations he did the things a visitor does. He went to Le Dôme on the same boulevard as his hotel. He spent a week at the Huxleys' house in Suresnes, which he found sleepy and dull, and let them take him to their doctor. He went once to Daniel Halévy's literary tea on the quai de l'Horloge and met François Mauriac there, an evening that produced the only line about Paris anyone quotes him on. He and Frieda spent the Easter weekend at Le Moulin du Soleil, the mill outside the city where Harry and Caresse Crosby ran the Black Sun Press.
I went to a French literary tea yesterday – with Mauriac and a few more – ye gods, how literary – the Lord made Adam out of printer's ink, in Paris.
Terms with Titus were settled on 5 April: three thousand copies at sixty francs. Lawrence left Paris on 7 April and went south to the sun, this time to Spain. The edition appeared in May, reprinted in August, and a third printing was authorised in February 1930, three weeks before he died.
A marble plaque went up on the building on 22 May 2019, ninety years after the stay, placed by the D. H. Lawrence Society with a reception hosted by the British Council in Paris. It gives the dates and the reason: that he lived here from 12 March to 7 April 1929, and that he came to find a publisher for Lady Chatterley's Lover.
The 2019 reception is worth separating from the 1929 visit, because the two are often run together. The British Council was founded in 1934, four years after Lawrence died. It hosted the ninetieth-anniversary event; he never set foot in it.
Last verified: August 2026.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is printed privately in Florence and pirated within months.
Lawrence stays here from 12 March to 7 April, hunting a publisher for a cheap edition.
He learns on 15 March that Frank Groves has pirated the novel in Germany.
Sylvia Beach declines the book; Edward Titus signs on 5 April for 3,000 copies at 60 francs.
Lawrence dies at Vence on 2 March, weeks after authorising a third printing.
A plaque is unveiled on the building on 22 May, the only memorial to Lawrence in Paris.
At the Grand Hôtel de Versailles, 60 boulevard du Montparnasse, from 12 March to 7 April 1929. It was a modest hotel rather than a grand one, and it no longer operates; the building stands and carries a plaque recording the stay.
To arrange a cheap edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover. The novel had been printed privately in Florence in 1928 and immediately pirated, with unauthorised copies selling at three hundred francs and more while he earned nothing. Paris had permissive publication law and a set of English-language presses, and Aldous and Maria Huxley told him it was the place to go.
No. Lawrence asked her in mid-March 1929 and she refused, saying she had had enough of controversy and did not want a name for publishing erotic literature. She had published Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 and knew what the aftermath cost. She appears to have suggested Edward Titus instead.
Edward Titus, an American bookseller who ran At the Sign of the Black Manikin at 4 rue Delambre. Terms were settled on 5 April 1929 for three thousand copies at sixty francs, against the three hundred francs and more the pirates were asking. It reprinted twice and earned Lawrence over a thousand pounds before his death.
Yes, one. A marble plaque was unveiled at 60 boulevard du Montparnasse on 22 May 2019 by the D. H. Lawrence Society, with a reception hosted by the British Council. It records the dates of the stay and why he came. It is the only permanent memorial to him in the city.
No. The hotel is gone and the building is in ordinary commercial and residential use. The plaque is on the street front and can be read from the pavement.
Commemorates · 2019
A marble plaque was unveiled on the façade on 22 May 2019, ninety years after the stay, giving the dates and the errand. It is the only permanent memorial to Lawrence in Paris.
Lived here · 1929
His address from 12 March to 7 April 1929, the four weeks he spent finding someone to print Lady Chatterley's Lover cheaply. The dates are on the plaque the building carries.
The quarter that took the painters from Montmartre around 1910 and the American writers a decade later, built around four cafés on one crossroads.
Visit the place
The giant brasserie of the Boulevard du Montparnasse, opened in December 1927 with a party the quarter never forgot — Blaise Cendrars was in the opening-night crowd.
Visit the place
The all-night café of the Vavin crossroads and the closest thing Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises has to a home address — the crowd always ends up at the Select.
Visit the place
The American bar where Ernest Hemingway met F. Scott Fitzgerald in late April 1925 — two weeks after The Great Gatsby was published.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
