When the mailmen were literary critics: Lady Chatterley's lover banned in the US, 1929

Today in Literature reminds us that today in 1929 the United States Post Office banned Lady Chatterley's Lover, the D.H. Lawrence novel, from entering the county.

Unfettered by having read it, 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....

It was another thirty years before a federal court held Americans could read the book without fear of Hellfire or jail.

Henry Bemis has that 1959 edition:

Lawrence, D. H., Lady Chatterley'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. 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 or best offer. 

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