Judge’s Copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover Sells at Auction

On 2nd November 1960 Penguin Books was found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, also known as the Lady Chatterley’s Lover Case. The case sent the D. H Lawrence book to the top of the bestsellers list and caused the book to be passed around by schoolboys for many years.

A few weeks ago we brought you the news that the copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover used by the judge in the case was to go up for auction at the end of October and now we have news of the sale.

The guide price at Sotheby’s was £15,000 but the sale exceeded estimates, reaching £56,000 at auction this week. The copy was sold to an anonymous online bidder.

Sir Laurence Byrne was the judge presiding on the case and he himself didn’t even read the book. He got his wife, Dorothy Byrne to read it, marking up the sexually explicit passages and making a corresponding list for her husband who brought Lady Chatterley’s Lover into court every day in a grey damask bag, hand stitched by his wife.

When Penguin Books was found not guilty by a jury who took just three hours to decide, there was uproar and the move was thought to help bring forth a more liberal and permissive Britain, generally bringing an end to banned books in the country.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover