The Lady Chatterley Trial Ends in Acquittal

A Novel Kept Out of Reach

D. H. Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928, and for more than thirty years the full text was effectively unavailable in Britain. A story of a married woman’s love affair with a gamekeeper, it used explicit language and treated class and sexuality with a frankness that British publishers and booksellers would not risk. A privately printed edition appeared in Italy, and expurgated versions circulated in English, but the complete book could not be openly published without the threat of prosecution.

A New Law and a Deliberate Test

The Obscene Publications Act of 1959 changed the rules. It allowed a defendant to argue that a work was published for the public good, because of its literary merit, and it permitted expert witnesses to speak in its defense. Penguin Books decided to publish the unabridged novel in 1960, the thirtieth anniversary of Lawrence’s death, and gave the authorities copies in advance, accepting that a prosecution would follow. The Director of Public Prosecutions brought the case, and the trial opened on October 20 at the Old Bailey.

Six Days at the Old Bailey

The prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked the jurors whether this was a book they would want their wives or servants to read. The question later became a symbol of how out of touch the case seemed. The defense called some three dozen witnesses, including critics, teachers, writers, and a bishop, who argued that the novel was a serious work of literature. The jury of nine men and three women heard evidence for six days and then deliberated for about three hours.

The Verdict and After

On November 2 the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Penguin’s first printing of 200,000 copies sold within days, and millions of copies were bought in the following months. Many writers and commentators saw the case as a turning point toward a more open culture in the 1960s. Its legal meaning was narrower. The trial showed that literary merit could be a defense under the 1959 Act, but later prosecutions in Britain were still brought and some succeeded. What the verdict did settle was that a major publisher could put a celebrated, controversial novel before the public and win.

The Book Behind the Trial

D. H. Lawrence, who was born in 1885 into a coal-mining family in Nottinghamshire and died of tuberculosis in 1930, wrote the novel near the end of his life. It tells of Constance, the wife of Sir Clifford Chatterley, an aristocrat paralyzed in the First World War, and her affair with the estate’s gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. Lawrence meant it as a protest against a society he saw as cold and mechanized, and against class barriers. Its sexual frankness was a means to that end. Many critics now regard it as a serious if uneven work, and the legal case gave the book a fame that its author never lived to see.