When the obscenity trial of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover made headlines in the UK in 1960, the press dubbed it the ‘Lady C’ scandal. As Guy Cuthbertson says in his new book about the novel, also titled Lady C, the nickname “suggests the controversy regarding Lawrence’s use of ‘the c-word’”, and Cuthbertson’s first chapter is therefore titled The C-Word.
Cuthbertson’s book, subtitled The Long, Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, discusses the novel’s publication history, and gives an exhaustive account of its cultural impact. His source materials include newspaper coverage of the Lady C controversy from the 1950s onwards. He also describes the obscenity trial, or rather the trials, as Lady Chatterley was tried for obscenity in Japan and the US before the more famous Old Bailey trial.
On the fiftieth anniversary of Lady C’s acquittal, I wrote about the British court case, commenting that “the most notorious moment of the trial came at the beginning,” when prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones asked the jury: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” I also listed the “many outdated assumptions” inherent in that question, and pointed out the hypocrisy of Griffith-Jones telling the jury to avoid adopting a Victorian attitude when “his moral objections to the novel were themselves somewhat Victorian”.
Similarly, Cuthbertson writes: “The most remarkable and memorable moment of the trial came near the start,” and itemises the “various implied statements” in the Griffith-Jones question to the jury. He also highlights the prosecutor’s hypocrisy: “He had asked the jury that they should not act ‘in any priggish, high-minded, super-correct mid-Victorian manner’, but that was a manner that he himself seemed to have adopted.”
The Old Bailey trial was covered in more detail by C.H. Rolph in The Trial of Lady Chatterley, published only three months after the verdict was announced. In 1990, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the case, the court stenographers’ transcript was published verbatim as The Lady Chatterley’s Lover Trial (edited by H. Montgomery Hyde).
Cuthbertson’s book, subtitled The Long, Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, discusses the novel’s publication history, and gives an exhaustive account of its cultural impact. His source materials include newspaper coverage of the Lady C controversy from the 1950s onwards. He also describes the obscenity trial, or rather the trials, as Lady Chatterley was tried for obscenity in Japan and the US before the more famous Old Bailey trial.
On the fiftieth anniversary of Lady C’s acquittal, I wrote about the British court case, commenting that “the most notorious moment of the trial came at the beginning,” when prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones asked the jury: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” I also listed the “many outdated assumptions” inherent in that question, and pointed out the hypocrisy of Griffith-Jones telling the jury to avoid adopting a Victorian attitude when “his moral objections to the novel were themselves somewhat Victorian”.
Similarly, Cuthbertson writes: “The most remarkable and memorable moment of the trial came near the start,” and itemises the “various implied statements” in the Griffith-Jones question to the jury. He also highlights the prosecutor’s hypocrisy: “He had asked the jury that they should not act ‘in any priggish, high-minded, super-correct mid-Victorian manner’, but that was a manner that he himself seemed to have adopted.”
The Old Bailey trial was covered in more detail by C.H. Rolph in The Trial of Lady Chatterley, published only three months after the verdict was announced. In 1990, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the case, the court stenographers’ transcript was published verbatim as The Lady Chatterley’s Lover Trial (edited by H. Montgomery Hyde).
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