Nick Thomas
University of Nottingham, UK
Servants and Masters: The Lady Chatterley Trial and the 1960s
The Lady Chatterley's Lover Obscenity Trial of 1960 was a cause celebre that not only tested the new Obscenity Act (1959) but which has been identified as one of the key moments of 1960s liberalisation. The decision by Penguin's owner, Allen Lane, to publish the previously banned text by D H Lawrence provoked intense discussion on issues of obscenity, the motivations for previous decisions to ban various titles, and the paternalistic attitudes to censorship exposed by the Prosecution's case. Yet the historiographical view of this trial, and particularly its meaning and impact, is curiously contradictory: on the one hand it is seen (by Marwick, for instance) as exemplifying a move away from Victorian values that had been a long-term feature of social change which reached its zenith in the 1960s, but on the other hand the decision to allow the publication of the book has been identified (by, among others, Allen Lane's biographer, Jeremy Lewis) as encouraging or even creating social change, especially attitudes to sex. Perhaps even more surprisingly, strikingly little research has been conducted into the validity of these positions. This paper will explore the problems posed by these seemingly irreconcilable positions and will suggest some possible solutions for discussion.