by Steve Newman

Created on: October 05, 2009

In 1960, you might have been forgiven for thinking that the only book Lawrence had ever written was Lady Chatterley's Lover, and only then because of the Old Bailey obscenity trial where the prosecuting council, Mervyn Griffiths-Jones, asked the all male jury - who had been allowed to read the unexpurgated version of the novel - if they would, allow their wives, or servants [and that was the clincher], to read such a book? That pompous, class-ridden statement, plus the fine, and witty, defence put forward by John Mortimer QC - who brought in, as defence witnesses, such brilliant writers and academics as E. M. Forster, Helen Gardner, and Raymond Williams - ensured Penguin Books won the day.

It was a landmark decision that helped to liberate not only the publishing and film industries, but society itself. It was the end of the rather stifling 1950s, and the start of what became the 'Swinging Sixties.'

When Penguin published the unexpurgated paperback version on the 10th November 1960, 200,000 copies were sold nationwide that day - at 3/6 each - with London's largest bookstore, Foyles, selling 300 copies in the first fifteen minutes of opening. By the end of the day Foyles had placed orders for a further 3,000 copies.

For the collector that first Penguin edition can today, in fine condition, fetch ten pounds. And those early Penguin paperbacks (and Penguin had printed virtually the whole of the Lawrence canon ready for the bookshops by the end of the trial) with their distinctive orange and cream covers, with Stephen Russ's iconic design of the phoenix rising from the flames (itself taken from a drawing by Lawrence), is as good a place for the new collector of Lawrence to start, with most titles readily available, in good condition, for between two and five pounds.

Sadly Lawrence never experienced the kind of free society that in the end allowed, even welcomed, a completely unexpurgated version of his final, explicit, novel to take its rightful place on the bookshelves, but instead had to spend his last years surviving off the small advances he received for his books, loans from friends, and the earnings from dozens of essays, magazine features, and short stories he managed to somehow fit in between the novels. And when we compare the four thousand pound Lawrence left at his death, to Hemingway's $15,000 advance from Scribners in 1928 for the magazine rights to A Farewell to Arms we begin to realise that Lawrence was, in1930, probably considered a risk by publishers,

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