Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Happy anniversary, Lady Chatterley's Lover

"Nothing, members of the Jury, will ever prevent young people from looking up certain words in the dictionary, or Shakespeare, or the Old Testament, and as long as there are medical books in the secondhand bookshops, some young people who may look at a particular diagram may not be solely influenced by a desire for medical education. We do not say for that reason that medical books should not be sold. Society cannot fix its standards by what is suitable for a young person of 14."

- from the closing speech for the defense
(a complete transcript of the trial was published as one of the Pocket Penguin series)

50 years ago today, a British jury found Penguin Books not guilty of publishing obscenity.

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