Book of the Day: While a new film production of Lady Chatterley's Lover argues the naughty bits are passe', 85 years on, we're sticking with the one that was prosecuted

The Guardian is lauding a new BBC production of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. They say what’s new and fresh about this outing is a hot cast and- novelty among novelties- removal of nearly all the realistically naughty language about sex that got the book banned in Britain and the UK for a quarter of a century:

Director Jed Mercurio, who also wrote the adaptation, maintains that there’s no justification these days for bad language. The words that got the book banned for 30 years have lost their original purpose, which was to de-smut sex. This seems sensible.

And, in a way, it does. When the book was issued in 1930, Lawrence used terminology known to most, but denied by the upper and ruling classes, among whose duties was to try to set- and maintain- standards for the plebs.

In 85 years, life has gone on, and the easily offended have moved one to easy new offenders. But Lawrence’s landmark remains a classic, and deservedly so. And Henry Bemis Books has a very good first American edition of the book available:

Lawrence, D. H., Lady Chatterly’s Lover (Grove Press, 1st U.S. ed., “Original Unexpurgated Version”, 1959). “This edition is the third manuscript version, first published by Giuseppe Orioli, Florence, 1928.” With an introduction by Mark Schorer and a preface by Archibald MacLeish.

This novel about a woman with the temerity to find a life without sex- her husband was disabled in The Great War- caused decades of fuss and scandal in most of the English-speaking world. Reading it now, it's remarkable to imagine why people got up on their hind legs so about it, and it's pleasing to be able to read it for its considerable literary merit.

In an early instance of congressional Republican literary criticism, Utah Senator Reed Smoot declared in 1930, "I've not taken ten minutes on Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!"

The American poet Ogden Nash wrote, in response,

Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)

Is planning a ban on smut.

Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.

And his reverend occiput.

Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,

Grit your molars and do your dut.,

Gird up your l__ns,

Smite h_p and th_gh,

We'll all be Kansas

By and by....

At its 1960 obscenity publication trial in the United Kingdom, the prosecutor summed up with the question that would, doubtless, have echoed through the drawing rooms of Downton Abbey: “Is this the sort of book you would wish your wife or servants to read?”

And the jury, to paraphrase Lawrence- and Nash, replied "F__k, yeah!"

Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket. Blue cloth spine over cream-colored paper boards; gilt lettering. Dust jacket very good with light wear along the edging. 8.5” x. 5.25”, 368 pp. HBB price: $175.

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