The Go-Between experience. Among other writers commenting on the book's contemporary context, Paul Binding has pointed out that its famous opening phrase, “The past is a foreign country”, had first been used by Hartley’s friend Lord David Cecil in his inaugural lecture as Goldsmith's Professor in 1949. Ali Smith revisited the observed parallel drawn between the treatment of class and sexuality in "The Go-Between" and in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1928). D. H. Lawrence’s novel was not allowed unexpurgated circulation in Britain until after "The Go-Between"s appearance, but perhaps, she speculated, Hartley's novel helped prepare the climate for the overturning of the British
The Go-Between to sell at first. However, it was greeted with favourable reviews. "The New York Times" called it "a triumph of literary architecture", while two articles were devoted to it in the "Los Angeles Times". Joseph Henry Jackson commented on its skilful presentation as “a many-leveled affair; perhaps only the author knows how much there is in it of symbol and reference." A month later Milton Merlin described it as "a superbly composed and an irresistibly haunting novel” characterised by “the author's beautiful and ingenious style, his whimsy, irony and humor, and, most of all, the powerful wallop of a deceptively