Which 1928 novel by D.H. Lawrence was banned in the UK for obscenity until 1960?

The 1928 novel by D. H. Lawrence banned in the UK for obscenity until 1960 is Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

The novel follows Constance Chatterley, an upper-class woman whose physical and emotional relationship with Oliver Mellors, a gamekeeper, crosses rigid class boundaries. Its explicit sexual language and frank treatment of desire challenged the censorship standards of the period. Lawrence first published an unexpurgated edition privately in Florence in 1928 because British commercial publication was not available.

Penguin Books released the complete English edition in 1960 and was prosecuted under Britain’s Obscene Publications Act 1959. The defence argued that the novel had literary merit, calling witnesses including E. M. Forster and Helen Gardner. On 2 November 1960, the jury found Penguin not guilty, allowing the book to be sold openly in Britain. Readers sometimes remember 1960 as the year the novel was “banned,” but it was also the year the landmark trial ended the effective prohibition on its unexpurgated British edition.