December 20: On
this day in 1929 D. H. Lawrence's Lady
Chatterley's Lover was banned in the United States. This was only one of a
string of bannings dating from its first publication the year before until the
landmark obscenity trials in 1959 (U.S.) and 1960 (Britain), but for Lawrence
personally it may have been the most devastating.
Lawrence expected, wanted, and got a fuss over the book, and
knew from the start that no mainstream publisher would touch it—though he was
disappointed that even Sylvia Beach, who had become Joyce's champion with her
first edition of Ulysses a decade
earlier, had declined the opportunity to publish Chatterley, which she called a "sermon-on-the-mount of
Venus." Undeterred, Lawrence published the book himself, in a series of
signed, private editions sold by quiet subscription. These were banned in many
countries, but sales were brisk, even with the many other pirate editions. As a
result, though besieged by "policemen, prudes and swindlers,"
Lawrence made a good profit, much of which he invested on Wall Street. He could
now confidently give up his half-hearted attempt to prepare an emasculated
version for wider distribution: "I somehow didn't get on very well with
the expurgation," he wrote Knopf Publishing, "I somehow went quite
colourblind, and couldn't tell purple from pink." He could now also
finance his long-contemplated, permanent return to his ranch in New Mexico, the
climate there seen as almost a last resort for his ever-worsening tuberculosis.
Lawrence attributed the collapse of this hope, and then his
health, to the U.S. ban. His subscription orders to America had been
disappearing in the mails for some time; he now believed that his unwelcome
novel had made its author persona non
grata, his application for immigration buried permanently at the bottom of
the pile. Even as he finally agreed to a sanatorium in Italy he was studying
ship's timetables for Atlantic crossings. One of the last photographs of him,
taken on the day of his death, March 2, 1930, shows the "Phoenix"
come to final ground: he is 85 lbs, in bed, reading a book about the voyage of
Columbus to the New World.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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