Lady Chatterly's L****?...

This day also boasts the conclusion of one of most infamous scandals in literature; an obscenity case over 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' in 1960, ending in the acquittal of Penguin Books. Written by D.H. Lawrence, 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', was first published in Florence in 1928, amid huge controversy. Society's uproar was due to Lawrence's depiction of explicit sex scenes, love across class divisions and his use of previously banned language. Therefore, an edition of the novel was only published in England in 1932, yet it was one which was strongly censored. The legal case in 1960, prosecuted under the 1959 Obscenity Act, was the result of the first uncensored publication of the novel, whose modernity was still ahead of society, even thirty two years after its writing. The next edition of the novel, in 1961, therefore contains a dedication, to 'the twelve jurors, three women and nine men, who returned a verdict of "not guilty" and thus made D.H. Lawrence's last noovel available for the first time to the public in the United Kingdom.'

On this day...

'Jude the Obscure', one of the most controversial novels of its time, was published in 1895. Its embodiment of modern ideas and themes, many too modern for the religious and prudish Victorian society to grappple with, led to it being branded 'Jude the Obscene'. Thomas Hardy, following the moral outcry over his previous novel, 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles', had chosen to entertain the notions of redundancy of marriage and religious hypocrisy; a bold statement, yet one which heralded the end of his prose writing, he himself stating 'a man must be a fool to deliberately stand up to be shot at'. For his remaining thirty-two years, Hardy wrote only poetry and drama, yet continued to make political statements, most notably against war in 'The Man He Killed'.

On this day...

The George Bernard Shaw play, 'Mrs. Warren's Profession', was performed in the Garrick Theatre, New York, in 1905. All participants, cast and crew, were arrested for obscenity, yet only the house manager was ever convicted. The play had caused outrage in the reserved society of Victorian England, and was banned due to its confrontation of prostitution, and implications of incest. Shaw himself, however, noted that he wrote the play, 'to draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused, not by female depravity and male licentiousness, but simply by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together'. Therefore, as opposed to writing a morally skewed play in order to shock both authorities and public alike, he wrote it for didactic means, attempting to educate and open eyes to the society around them. The play wasn't legally performed in Britain until 1926.