By Dan Nonte, University Relations
The English modernist writer D. H. Lawrence published “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” his last full-scale novel, in 1928. This story of the illicit love affair between Lady Constance Chatterley and her husband’s gamekeeper became one of the most notable and notorious books of the 20th century.
The Hodges Reading Room will feature the exhibit “Loving Lady Chatterley: Selections from the D. H. Lawrence Collection of Keith Cushman” Feb. 14 to April 28. Cushman is a professor in the Department of English.
This colorful, diverse exhibit will include:
• first editions;
• early unexpurgated editions published in Europe and Japan;
• separate printings of Lawrence’s essays about the novel;
• first editions of the first and second manuscript versions of the novel;
• 1940s and 50s pulp paperbacks of the expurgated text;
• translations;
• parodies, sequels, and dramatizations;
• books about the novel;
• movies;
• movie posters and other movie memorabilia;
• and ephemera.
Lawrence, fed up with the censorship and bowdlerization he had suffered throughout his career, shattered literary taboos with the novel. The book is the first mainstream English novel to include explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse, and in the bargain the gamekeeper uses Anglo-Saxon four-letter words.
Few people realize that in the novel, Lawrence, beleaguered and close to death himself, places his faith not only in the revitalizing power of sexuality but also in the redemptive force of love and tenderness. The novel also offers a trenchant criticism of modern industrial society.
Because of its sexual content and naughty words, Lawrence had the book privately printed in Florence. This prevented him from being able to obtain copyright. As a result he had to contend with many pirated editions before his early death in 1930.
The unexpurgated text could not be sold legally in either the United States or England until landmark legal decisions – in 1959 in America, in 1960 in Britain – declared that the book was not obscene.
The novel seems tame enough by contemporary standards, but after decades the book’s scent of pornography, or at least erotica, remains. It has generated numerous movie versions, not to mention a wide array of parodies and sequels. Lawrence’s best-known work, it long ago took on iconic status.
