the book collector
‘Although Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in its time has been called many things, it is unquestionably one of the most in- teresting bibliographical specimens of the century’ write Roberts and Poplawski. ‘It has been pirated extensively, expurgated and bowdlerised, condemned and confiscated, translated into many languages, and published in a great variety of formats.’ Had there been but a single version of the text it would have been di Y cult enough but in fact there were three manuscript versions of Lady Chatterley , each with its own publication history. The first edition of Lawrence’s first manuscript was published in the United States in 1944, by Dial Press, in an edition of 1,000 copies. It was reprinted several times and then re-set for an Australian edition produced probably in 1946. Heavily expurgated editions came from Avon in 1950 and Shakespeare House in 1951. The first British edition of this version was published by Heinemann in 1972. The first edition of the second manuscript version was published by Mondadori in 1954. The third and final version was the one we’ve been tracing. Then there are the sequels and parodies. Roberts’s Appendix 1 deals with twenty-two items in this class, such as, for example, The Hounding of John Thomas by Craig Brown, Century 1994. 12 His Appendix 1B covers Piracies and Forgeries. But as Roberts admits, versions unrecorded by him have popped up in many languages and countries simply because of the absence of copyright protection. It took 30 years after Lawrence’s death for things to change: in 1959 the New York Court of Appeal overturned a ban on publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover on the grounds that it was written with ‘power and tenderness’ which were ‘compelling’. Accordingly on 4 May 1959, Grove Press, having reprinted three times before publication, sent out 45,000 copies in the United States. In Britain the same year the Obscene Publications Act said that even if a book was judged obscene by some it could still be published if it was shown to have ‘redeeming social merit’ or to be in the interests of science, literature, art, or learning. Penguin printed 200,000 copies - a huge gamble, presumably based on the likelihood that the New York ruling would be followed in Britain
12 . ‘John Thomas’ is slang for the penis in Britain. Etymology unknown.
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