A UK publishing ban on a 1928 novel by which author was lifted in 1960?

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" is a novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, first published privately in 1928 in Italy, and in 1929 in France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books. Penguin won the case, and quickly sold 3 million copies. The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States (1929–59), Canada, Australia, India, and Japan. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working class man and an upper class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable (four-letter) words.

David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. Some of the issues Lawrence explores are sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.

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11 Comments

Keely Anne Williams

The comment was made at the trial, "would you let your servant read this book" shows how out of touch they were.

Marguerite LaHaye

I read the book in my teens because I wondered what all the fuss was about. I still wonder.

Richard G Schwartz

Very tame by today's standards.

Peter de Loriol

I have a signed copy of the Trial of Lady Chatterley, by Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin. It was largely due to a small number of people who invested in his nascent company that he made his fortune, and theirs. I still retain a verylarge portion of my mother's shares in this company.

Georgia Kemp

The version called The First Lady Chatterley is a much better book. There is also another version called John Thomas and Lady Jane.

Howard Groopman

Never read it, but I know my parents did. I think I have the paperback in a box somewhere.

Player

Marguerite LaHaye, prudes the lot of them. I wonder what would've happened to 50 Shades in that era. Fahrenheit 451 treatment springs to mind.

Patsy Burchell

I'd be in my twenties when I got my hands on a copy of the book, I used to sit on my cb radio, key the mike and read passages from the book, I thought it funny till one day when I unkeyed the mike and someone told me to carry on, I didn't, oh the follys of youth.

Iswardew Matai

The British were pretty prudish in those days. The dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization Mr. D.H. Lawrence was trying to warn us of, has made huge progress.