The Charioteer was published by Longmans, Green in 1953 in the UK (it was not published in the United States until 1959, due to its homosexual content). It is Renault’s bridge work — the novel that connects her earlier contemporary fiction with the Greek historical novels for which she is best known, and the book that most directly addresses the homosexual experience in mid-twentieth-century England.
Laurie Odell, wounded at Dunkirk, recovers in a convalescent hospital where he meets Andrew, a young conscientious objector serving as an orderly. Their attraction is mutual but unspoken — Andrew may not even recognize its nature. Then Ralph Lanyon appears — an older naval officer whom Laurie hero-worshiped at school, now openly gay and part of a social circle that represents a very different version of homosexual life: worldly, cynical, sexually frank, and self-destructive.
The title refers to Plato’s metaphor from the Phaedrus: the soul as a chariot drawn by two horses, one noble and one base, the charioteer struggling to control both. Laurie must choose between the Platonic ideal (Andrew — innocent, unconscious, pure) and the Socratic reality (Ralph — experienced, damaged, honest about desire). Neither is fully adequate: the ideal denies the body; the real risks degrading the soul.
The novel was revolutionary in 1953 for treating homosexuality neither as disease nor as wickedness but as a natural orientation that could be lived with dignity — or degraded by the social conditions that forced it underground.
Collecting The Charioteer
First edition (Longmans, Green, London, 1953): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $100–$350
- US first (Pantheon, 1959): $40–$100
- Signed copies: $200–$500
- Without jacket: $20–$50