San Francisco, the Chronicle editorialized after one such meeting, that "only one copy of a book, presented to a jury, is necessary to determine whether or not it is obscene within the definition of the law. If it is so declared, then, and only then, should books be confiscated and prosecution undertaken. Wholesale confiscation in advance of such legal determination is an unwarranted assumption of authority. To declare boycotts on newsstands, to harass their proprietors, is an inhibition of the sale of their reading matter. San Franciscans should not be pannicked. . . ."

After a six-day trial in London's Central Criminal Court, the famous Old Bailey, Penguin Books, Ltd., was acquitted on November 2, by jury of nine men and three women, of having published an obscene book, the unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterly's Lover. The case aroused tremendous interest throughout Great Britain, receiving column after column of almost wordby-word coverage in the leading London newspapers, reporting the testimony of 35 witnesses for the defendants. As the unanimous jury verdict was announced, the jammed courtroom burst into applause. During the trial, each member of the jury was required to read fully a copy of the Penguin paperback edition. Said Sir Allen Lane, managing director of Penguin, after the verdict

"The decision means that it will be extremely doubtful whether there are any future prosecutions of a serious author published by a serious publisher."

Sir Allen immediately ordered the distribution of 200,000 copies of Lady Chatterly which had been stored in the firm's warehouse. By the middle of November, the novel, banned in England since its original publication in 1928, was selling

one

fast, and Penguin readied a 200,300,000 second printing.

The trial itself revolved around the issue whether, taking the book as a whole, and excepting the fact that it might be shocking or disgusting, it was obscene in the sense that it tended to deprave or corrupt. It became an endless procession of prominent citizens defending D. H. Lawrence and his work. They included some of England's bestknown literary, ecclesiastical and scholarly figures: The Bishop of Woolwich, Dr. John Robinson, found the book not depraving "either in intention or in effect'' and one which Christians ought to read. He said Lawrence was "trying to portray the sex relationship as something sacred." Dame Rebecca West said that a lot of the pages in the book were ludicrous but that it is not without "literary merit." Stephen Potter, among other witnesses, defended the use of four-letter words because Lawrence was "trying to take these words out of the context of the lavatory wall and give them back a dignity and meaning." Norman St. John Stevens, a leading Catholic theologian, found the book unquestionably moral, and one that Catholic priests would "profit" by reading. Some witnesses argued that Lady Chatterly actually did the opposite of recommending wickedness or vice, that it proposed a right and full relationship between man and woman.

Mr. Justice Byrne charged that the jurors were to consider the novel not from the viewpoint of the student of literature, but from that of the individual reader who knows nothing about Lawrence or literature, who buys or borrows the book, "and reads it during the lunch-time break at the factory and takes it home in the evening to finish." Just like people do with ONE Magazine.