Lady Chatterley's Lover
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
Documented challenge/ban history: Obscenity; subject of the 1960 UK Obscene Publications trial — Read about this book on Wikipedia · Historical censorship record
- 1928 — Privately printed in Florence, Italy after the unexpurgated text is refused by mainstream publishers
- 1929 — Banned as obscene in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere; a U.S. postal ban blocks copies from being mailed
- 1960 — Penguin Books is prosecuted and acquitted under the UK's new Obscene Publications Act in Regina v. Penguin Books Ltd, finally allowing unabridged publication in Britain
Some printings of this book were altered: For about 30 years the only legally published editions were expurgated, beginning with Martin Secker's authorized abridgment of 1932 and including the 1946 Signet paperback in America. The full text was first openly published by Grove Press in the US in 1959 and by Penguin in the UK in 1960.
Printings to check: Martin Secker, before 1960; Signet, before 1959; New American Library, before 1959; Any edition before 1959. Editions that fit are flagged below.
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