A report on Lady Chatterley's Lover, Penguin Books and Obscenity
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, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies.
- Lady Chatterley's LoverThe book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan.
- Lady Chatterley's LoverJust as Lane well judged the public's appetite for paperbacks in the 1930s, his decision to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence in 1960 boosted Penguin's notoriety.
- Penguin BooksThe novel was at the time unpublished in the United Kingdom and the predicted obscenity trial, R v Penguin Books Ltd, not only marked Penguin as a fearless publisher, it also helped drive the sale of at least 3.5 million copies.
- Penguin BooksThe trial of Penguin Books over their publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 failed to secure a conviction and the conviction in the 1971 trial of Oz magazine was overturned on appeal.
- Obscenity1 related topic with Alpha
D. H. Lawrence
0 linksEnglish writer, novelist, poet and essayist.
English writer, novelist, poet and essayist.
His best known novels—Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover—notably concerned gay and lesbian relationships, and were the subject of censorship trials.
Both novels were highly controversial and were banned on publication in the UK for obscenity, although Women in Love was banned only temporarily.
This edition was posthumously re-issued in paperback there both by Signet Books and by Penguin Books in 1946.