Please join us as Ray Rauth leads a discussion of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Banned in many countries for years, and even decades, Lawrence’s novel is a landmark in literary history. In 1960, the book was at the center of a major obscenity trial in London against its publisher Penguin Books. Prevailing in court, Penguin then went on to sell 3 million copies. Around the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the book could be mailed, and thus sold. But, beyond the frequently thumbed pages containing the naughty bits, the novel actually deals with such major themes as the relationship between the life of the mind and life of the body as well as, of course, all the issues of class structure in early 20th century England. Vogue, reviewing the importance of the book to literary history, said it “marked a fundamental shift for censorship in the United States…and is now considered a landmark case for the First Amendment.”