Penguin Books

Penguin Books’ 1960 publication of an unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover turned the publisher into a central participant in a landmark obscenity case. By choosing to challenge the prevailing standard rather than issue an expurgated text, Penguin Books helped bring the novel’s explicit language and sexual content before a court and a broad public audience.

The publication and its challenge

Interest in Lady Chatterley’s Lover revived when Penguin Books decided to publish the complete, unexpurgated novel. The decision was a direct challenge to the obscenity standard then being applied to the book. The resulting case was brought under the Obscene Publications Act 1857, making the edition itself the focus of a test of what could legally be published.

Trial and acquittal

The ensuing trial lasted six days. Prosecutors drew attention to the novel’s explicit sexual acts and slang terms for sexual organs, while writers and critics, including Rebecca West and E. M. Forster, appeared among those opposing the prosecution’s position. Thirty-five expert witnesses were called in total. Penguin Books was acquitted, and the verdict resolved the case in the publisher’s favor.

Consequences and reception

The acquittal made Lady Chatterley’s Lover notorious and helped establish Penguin Books’ publication as a challenge to restrictions on sexual expression. The novel was subsequently associated with the sexual liberation that gathered force in the 1970s, although that reception was contested: the rise of feminism and radical politics also prompted criticism of D. H. Lawrence’s misogyny and distrust of democracy. The case thus gave the publisher’s decision consequences beyond the courtroom, placing the novel at the center of continuing arguments about literary freedom and the limits of sexual representation.