Rare Chatterley book for auction

A paperback copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover used by the judge in the book’s landmark U.K. obscenity trial is expected to sell at auction for up to $20,000. Penguin Books was prosecuted in 1960 for publishing D.H. Lawrence’s novel, a landmark in the frank literary depiction of sexuality. A prosecution lawyer infamously asked in court whether it was “a book that you would

... wish your wife or your servants to read.” Jurors found Penguin not guilty, and the case came to be seen as a sign of changing social mores. The copy Sotheby’s is selling on Oct. 30 in London comes with a damask bag hand-stitched by the wife of Judge Lawrence Byrne so that press photographers could not photograph the judge carrying the scandalous book.