British Library buys pirate editions of Lady Chatterley's Lover

The British Library has purchased copies of two rare US pirate editions of Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence.

The library has discovered that even the pornographers practised censorship. Among their "many deletions" are a 200-word passage where the lovers use flowers. Instead of "he fastened fluffy young oak-sprays round her breasts, sticking in tufts of bluebells and campion: and in her navel he poised a pink campion flower, and in her maiden hair were forget-me-nots and woodruff", the passage is rewritten simply as "he decorated her with them". Cut altogether is the line "she threaded two pink campions in the bush of red-gold hair above his penis. 'There!' she said. 'Charming! Charming!' "

The Library's curator explains the acquisition of the unauthorized, expurgated editions: "Lawrence was one of the most censored English novelists in the 20th century. The way in which his books were published betrays the intricate relationship between censorship, profit, and popularity."

Posted on Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 9:49 AM