That month, Alfred Harcourt published The Autobiography of Alice B. September 1933 was a turning point in Gertrude Stein’s career. Yet, the cultural impact of Forever Amber has been largely neglected, in part because scholars have focused on controversial “highbrow” fiction such as Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.'' Balfour demanded a ban on 'salacious literature.' Drawing on extensive archival research in the Macmillan collection at the New York Public Library and the Annie Laurie Williams papers at Columbia University Library, this article shows that a “middlebrow” bestseller such as Forever Amber played an important role in the fight against censorship in the United States and in Canada. The Catholic press in Quebec endorsed the boycotts, and the Toronto politician David A. Moreover, the appeals to boycott movie theaters that played Forever Amber triggered similar campaigns in Canada. In 1946, Winsor’s novel went on trial in Boston for obscenity. The immense success of both the novel and the $6,375,000 movie adaptation met with active resistance from conservative groups in the US and in Canada.

Forever Amber can be seen as an example of “the feminine middlebrow novel” (Humble), a kind of commercial fiction largely written and consumed by middle-class women. ''In 1944, Macmillan launched Kathleen Winsor’s racy first novel Forever Amber with an advertising budget of nearly $27,000.

Forever amber book review