Lady Chatterly's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
- Artist/Author/Producer: D.H. Lawrence
- Confronting Bodies: Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield
- Dates of action: 1959
- Location: United States
- Description of the Art Work
- "Between October 1926 and January 1928 D.H. Lawrence wrote three
versions of a novel in which he described the affair of the fictional
Lady Constance Chatterly, wife of Sir Clifford Chatterly -an intellectual,
writer and Midlands landowner who has been confined to a wheelchair by
war wounds- with the estate game-keeper, one Oliver Mellors, the son of a
minor. While the book itself, which ends with the lovers each awaiting
divorce and looking forward to their new life life together, does not
stray conspicuously from Lawrence's general moral and philosophical
attitudes, his use of taboo language far exceed anything acceptable in
contemporary fiction." The Encyclopedia of Censorship, Jonathon Green,
Facts on File, N.Y. C. Pg. 166
- Description of incident
- The work is deemed "an obscene and filthy work" that cannot be sent
through the mail by Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield.
- Results of incident
- The ban, lifted after two lower courts disagreed with Summerfield, is
not reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1960. The novel went on to sell
two million copies in a year.
Source: New York Public Library, New York City