Posted on November 2, 2020 at 2:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Today was quite the day in literary history in 1960.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike was published, while a jury in Britain declared that D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover — a book written decades prior — was not obscene.

We have a few links to share, to mark the occasions.

On the lighter side, the British Library offers up an image of the front-page news along with a synopsis of what the case was about, and we have an update on what happened to the copy used at trial.

On the deeper end, the Guardian has a lengthy analysis of how the trial affected British culture, and the New Yorker’s real-time reporting from the trial is also available.

And in between, we have Britannica's summary of the work and its legal travails.

Rabbit, Run may have been less obviously scandalous, but it too stirred up some controversy — the American Library Association includes it on its list of frequently challenged classics.

Nevertheless, the attention it drew its author was, on the whole, positive; it was a finalist for the 1961 National Book Award, and its review in the New York Times declared the author "a man to watch."

Categories: Today in Books

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