LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER DH LAWRENCE

When: 1928 What: Book Where: Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, UK, USA

Between its original privately published release in Italy in 1928 until 1960, it was impossible to buy an unedited, uncensored version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Britain. The cause for this lengthy expurgation? Explicit sex and the use of four-letter words.

The case famously came to a head in 1960 with an obscenity trial against Penguin Books when it published the first unedited version of the novel in the UK. The trial took place just a year after the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 and as such was very much a test case for the new laws. The key legal challenge was around the vulgar language in the book, but Penguin was able to prove the book had literary merit. A later edition was dedicated to the jurors who passed the not-guilty verdict.

In a recent twist to the story, the judge’s copy of the book was barred from being exported from the UK in May 2019 after it was sold at auction for £56,000. All of the ‘questionable’ material had been highlighted by the judge’s wife for reference in the trial.