A Descriptive Bibliography of Lady Chatterley’s Lover: With Essays Toward a Publishing History of the Novel

This bibliography clarifies the circumstances regarding the publication, marketing and distribution (in private, pirated, expurgated, trade and mass-market, hard- and soft-bound editions) of D. H. Lawrence’s controversial novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Prefixed to the descriptions of each edition are introductory essays designed to both elucidate the novel’s long and interesting publication history and indicate the social settings which conditioned its production and reception.

The bibliographical listings classify the various printings into editions, impressions, issues and states. The work attempts to describe all appearances of the novel in English in book form whether in pirated, expurgated, continental, or decensored editions, and regardless of format. Introductory essays discuss such matters as distribution of piracies, strategy of expurgations, the 1959 Chatterley Sweepstakes, the Swedish, Paris, and Japanese editions, and the advertising tactics of the paperback publishers. The work therefore attempts a popular history of the novel. It incorporates information obtained through interviews with booksellers, writers, literary agents, and publishers and reproduces title pages, bindings, and illustrations. Special attention is given to the parodies and sequels, which exemplify the shrewdness of publishers from Samuel Roth to Lyle Stuart in exploiting the complex relationships between serious literature, popular pornography and pulp romance. Such details give evidence of the audience for which a particular volume was intended. While a standard bibliography of D. H. Lawrence does exist, no book has as yet offered as much detail on volumes containing the text of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, nor has any attempted to capture the lengthy publishing history of Lawrence’s pariah novel.