Obscenity trial judge’s copy of ‘Lady Chatterley’ to be auctioned
A line forms outside The Old Bailey Central Criminal Court, in London, for admission to the public gallery where the "Lady Chatterley's Lover" case was being heard on Oct. 27, 1960. (AP Photo/File)
LONDON — 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 15,000 pounds ($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 being sold by Sotheby’s 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 snap the judge with the scandalous tome.
