When Forever Amber 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 Cornel Wilde.

I first read Forever Amber when I was a teenager. I remember that I could not put it down. In fact, I read it so quickly that I immediately 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 novels 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 edition, 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, and went on reading books about this period for the next five years. After that, she wrote the novel.

Forever Amber is set during the English Restoration, after Charles II returned to London from exile in Europe and the monarchy was restored. Every detail of life in that period--food, fashions, architecture, interior design, and politics--is covered in the fictional tale of Amber St. Clare. Winsor skillfully dissects the manners and mores of that age in every echelon of society, from peasants to princes of the blood. We see the pomp, ceremony, and magnificence of the court and how it coexisted with poverty, sickness, cruelty, and despair. We get more than a glimpse of such court beauties as Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, the King’s mistress; we meet Samuel Pepys, the diarist; Sir Peter Lely, the great portraitist; and Nell Gwynne, the orange seller and actress who became another mistress of the sexually driven king. The author pinpoints the excesses of the court--adultery, rape, rampant love affairs, illegitimate children, and abortions--and we recognize the everyday sensuality, greed, duplicity, and treachery of the era; in essence, we witness life as it was lived by rich and poor alike. We suffer through the Great Plague, during which we see Amber at her best, full of heart and compassion. And in consequence we are caught up in her life, and we root for her.

Kathleen Winsor managed to make the Restoration Period vivid and real, and her fictional characters spring readily to life on the page. She also created a marvelous sense of time and place and atmosphere, and it is this that sets the tone of the novel.

Amber, beautiful and sexy, may well be immoral, but the court of Charles II is worse: bawdy, brutal, cruel, licentious, and wicked. On the other hand, when it comes to intimate sex scenes between Amber and her many and varied lovers, a great deal is left to the imagination of the reader. As perhaps it should be.

In a curious way, I think those critics of long ago were really reviewing the Restoration Period itself, and not the story Kathleen Winsor wrote. However, the book does indeed have an overwhelming sense of sexuality, which comes from both the writing and the many characters the author invented, most especially Amber. Born illegitimate, of aristocratic but unwed parents, she is brought up by a farmer and his wife as their niece. At the age of 16 she is captivated by a dashing cavalier passing through her village, and she goes off to London with him. She never looks back. Her adventurous life, her many loves, and her rising fortunes make for compelling reading.

I once described fiction as a monumental lie that has to have the absolute ring of truth if it is to succeed. And that ring of truth invariably comes from research, which in turn gives a novel its authenticity. It is this kind of authenticity plus good storytelling that made Forever Amber a bestseller 56 years ago.

Now it has become a classic, and that is as it should be.

—March 2000