Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship

by Barney Rosset

  There were other obstacles. A Knopf executive, William Koshland, whom until then I had considered a friend, wrote to the American agent Allan Collins with instructions concerning Grove. Collins telephoned me and reported that Knopf considered himself the only authorized publisher of the US edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and that version was now under license to the paperback house New American Library. Further, Collins went on, if Grove succeeded in winning a positive court decision in our censorship case, Knopf would expect to be the publisher. Thus, Alfred Knopf used a literary agent to let us know his stand. On the one hand he didn’t think an unexpurgated version could be published here. And on the other, if it could be, he intended to do it himself, thus benefiting from our expensive court actions, leaving Grove—which had far less clout than Knopf—in serious, precarious financial difficulties. Ultimately, he did not do that, but New American Library and others would take advantage of Grove’s legal battle on behalf of the book. His stance was a preview of things to come. He couldn’t prevent Grove from going ahead but, ultimately, to his credit, he did not carry out his threat. Still, it was hardly a gentle kind of coercion.

  Most of the negotiations on the rights for Lady Chatterley’s Lover were conducted in the spring and summer of 1954. At the time I had little money to work with. My father had helped me out until his death in September 1954, but the sums he contributed were relatively small, in line with the $3,000 paid for the original Grove Press and its inventory of perhaps a thousand paperbacks, which I had stored in the third floor apartment of the brownstone I lived in on West Ninth Street in Greenwich Village. I could not ask him to finance such an open-ended gamble as a long court case for a book whose rights I didn’t even own. After his death, although my mother was willing to help, I found myself embroiled in a hands-on fight with the bank that had been named co-executor of my father’s estate with me—the Continental Bank. The money was to be put in a trust for my mother for as long as she lived, and the remaining funds would go to me. Obviously, the situation was not conducive to freeing up money for the Lady Chatterley battle against censorship.

  I was co-executor, with the biggest bank in Chicago, of my father’s estate. What I did was rather incredible—I can now see this in hindsight. I took my father’s bank, Metropolitan Trust Co., and merged it with Grove Press. Practically overnight Grove consisted of paperback and hardcover books and 90-day US government bonds! Both were confected from paper, but that was the only similarity. Predictably, the Continental Bank, my co-executor, objected.

  Suddenly I was involved in a two-front war—the kind of war I had been taught by Karl Marx to most assiduously avoid. Some people might have considered the Continental Bank tougher and more dangerous than even the US Post Office. It had to be settled by a mixture of court action and guerilla warfare. And it was.

  I did not lose, but I emerged from the battle with a significantly diminished inheritance for my mother and ultimately myself. However, my insightful, wonderful mother, to whom the estate had been left, and who stood to lose the most if merging Grove and the Trust Co. proved to be a disaster, enthusiastically endorsed my most unusual request to the court to dismiss my co-executor, the Continental Bank.

  Time passed. We were publishing other books, meanwhile. But Lady Chatterley was not getting any closer to going to the printer. Frustrated, in 1955 I decided to offer, once more, a compromise to Alfred Knopf. Although Grove had already incurred considerable expenditures to bring things this far, I would turn the entire matter over to Knopf on the conditions that they publish the book with the text unadulterated and that, if a legal action ensued, they would pursue the case to its conclusion. Also, alternatively, I offered to work together with them. In the event we won in court, I suggested, we would publish the book under either a Knopf or Grove imprint and share costs and any profit.

  Frieda Lawrence was enthusiastic. “It’s very exciting,” she wrote. “I think it is an important fight not only for this book, but others in the future. I shall be most interested in what Knopf answers.”

  Alfred A. Knopf, whom I never got to know, or even had the opportunity to discuss this terribly important publishing matter with, bowed out, but, predictably, on his own terms. He had his colleague William Koshland write me that they would “leave the matter for resolution between you and Laurence Pollinger.” Pollinger was dead set against Grove publishing the book and we were stymied in our efforts to reach some amicable solution. Again Ephraim London reaffirmed our legal position:

  The fact that Pollinger, Collins and Frere [of Heinemann & Co., a British publisher interested in doing its own edition] are opposed to a Grove Press edition is immaterial, for none has any right in the United States to the third version of the work; in fact, no one has, for the book is in the public domain, that is unprotected by copyright and publishable by anyone, with no strings attached.

  But I was still in a tough spot. Without a heavy bankroll, how could

  I publish the book and risk an immediate competing edition from Knopf? When I did not hear from Pollinger, I reluctantly decided to shelve the project for the time being. That was in March 1955. Frieda died in August 1956. It turned out that our decision to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover could not be carried out until 1959.

  While my fight against the censors was on hold, I was not idle as a publisher. I was rapidly building our catalogue. In the same year that we laid the groundwork for a test of the obscenity laws, we published the first English-language edition of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the most important single book we were ever to publish. Other books and people we published during that time included Jean Genet’s plays The Maids and Deathwatch, and two novels by the delightful Nigerian author Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. We also distributed twenty titles on world art with National Gallery London Publications. They had none of Pollinger’s animus against us, nor did the eminent British firms Chatto & Windus or Faber and Faber, T. S. Eliot’s publisher. In 1955 we published Donald Keene’s beautifully edited and translated Anthology of Japanese Literature, supported by UNESCO, as well as Beckett’s novel Molloy, and many out-of-print classics, including books by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Mark Twain. Meantime, I had the stupendous stupidity to turn down J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, both offered to me by Faber.

  In 1955, a French film version of Lady Chatterley was released and became immediately banned in New York. Ephraim London, who by now was a Lawrence expert, took a case against this banning all the way to the US Supreme Court. The case was scheduled to be heard in January 1959. London told me he was absolutely sure he would win. Such a precedent, of course, would be a big help in any lawsuit that was sure to arise when Grove published the book—if we could get it published. It seemed to me an auspicious time to proceed.

  In December 1958, I told Mark Schorer that Grove was going ahead with the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and requested that he get the manuscript of the unexpurgated version in shape for the printer. Much work had to be done, checking Lawrence’s notes and corrections, and making sure that our version would be as authentic as possible. I asked Archibald MacLeish for permission to use his brilliant 1954 letter in defense of Chatterley as a preface to the book. He readily agreed, rewrote the letter, and changed the date to 1959. Our jacket copy featured statements on Lawrence by Edmund Wilson and Jacques Barzun—the auspices could not have been more impressive. Schorer added a bibliographical note to frame the edition with proper literary and historical material. Our presentation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was as good as we could make it. At least I was satisfied I had been true to Lawrence.

  I sent a book announcement to the New York Times, which it published on March 19, 1959, stating that Grove Press was preparing to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the unexpurgated version. We wrote:

  There is no reason, literary or legal, that this modern masterpiece should be withheld from the American public any longer. The
book is a beautiful and tender love story, with a prominent place in modern English literature.

  Our advertising was done in the same understated but somehow historical style as our initial announcement. It was handled by “our” advertising agency, Sussman and Sugar. We also organized a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign, designed to keep a representative selection of daily newspapers and weekly periodicals fully and promptly updated about our fight to circulate the book freely.

  It was a big help when we contracted with Readers’ Subscription, perhaps the most literary book club of its day, to offer the novel to its members. The club was headed by Arthur J. Rosenthal, who later became the director of Harvard University Press. Not only did its distribution to members add to the overall sales figures, but its law firm helped with our legal defense. Arthur was a perfect partner. He had great integrity and he was no snob. Arthur was the kind of guy who wouldn’t ride in his father-in-law’s large private plane because of the appearance of accepting the gift of a free ride. (I, on the other hand, never hesitated to replace him if the seat was made available to me to go in comfort from East Hampton to New York!)

  Orders began to pour in after the New York Times announcement. But some booksellers were nervous, and they had a right to be. We assured them that Grove Press would pay legal fees in the event they got into trouble with local law enforcement—a rather innovative offer for its day, or any day for that matter.

  The media was very receptive to our publicity about Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Most magazines accepted our advertising. Newsweek and Time gave us nice feature stories in their May 4, 1959 issues, which coincided with our announced publication date. The New York Times, having at first turned down our advertisements, published a very favorable review by Harry T. Moore, an important literary critic and an expert in Lawrence and censorship. Ben Grauer, a prominent TV newsman, interviewed Archibald MacLeish about the book, while Mike Wallace, in his pre–60 Minutes CBS career, interviewed Ephraim London about his litigation on behalf of the film version. The media showed real excitement about all this. There was a very real sense that the roadblocks to free expression were being seriously challenged and perhaps even broken down.

  Then came a small explosion. I fired Ephraim London. What happened was this. Ephraim had gone with a group of us—Schorer, Harry T. Moore, my third wife Cristina, her sister Luisa, and perhaps several others—to Boston for the opening of a Harold Pinter play I had published, The Birthday Party. We were all seated together in a hotel dining room in Cambridge, and Ephraim began to describe how he was planning to conduct the Chatterley case. I disagreed with him on some now-forgotten point. He immediately put me down, brusquely stating, “We’re going to do it my way, or not at all.” My knee-jerk reaction was to tell him that he was finished on the case. I remember thinking that this was probably inevitable. I was not going to be muzzled by my own attorney while I was engaged in a fight for freedom of expression. Ephraim, who had defended Alger Hiss and Lenny Bruce, and who was responsible for removing the ban on Rossellini’s film The Miracle, was admittedly a great attorney. And he had been deeply involved with me on settling my father’s estate. But my whole publishing effort—even my own freedom—was involved. I wanted a voice in the defense.

  In need of fresh legal counsel, I hired Cy Rembar, a neighbor in East Hampton, to represent us in the case we knew was coming. Once all was said and done, I don’t think Cy approached the case much differently from how Ephraim would have done it. But he at least let me think I was involved in the decision-making process each step of the way. Fortunately, he was also a highly intelligent and capable lawyer. Ultimately, he also became an authority on First Amendment cases.

  By March 2 we had a 7,000-copy advance sale. Lady Chatterley’s Lover would go through fourteen printings—161,000—between the first order on March 17 and the last on July 22, the day after Judge Bryan cleared the book of obscenity charges.

  The US Post Office took official steps to ban the novel from the mail on April 30, 1959, when Robert K. Christenberry, Postmaster of New York City, ordered 164 copies detained. On May 6 he sent official notice that the book was “nonmailable pursuant to 18 U.S. Code 1461 … in that it is obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, and filthy in content and character. The dominant effect of the book appeals to prurient interest”—the legal standard the Post Office intended to uphold.

  Grove complied with the Post Office order to not mail any more books until the issue had been settled, and we agreed to a May 14 hearing date in New York. The Post Office ban was more the statement of a censor than a police action, but if it withstood legal challenge, it would suppress the edition. The ban itself, however, did not seriously interrupt Grove’s distribution of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. We had already mailed about 30,000 copies before the ban took effect, and continued to ship books by truck to wholesalers. For small orders, Grove shipped by railway express and shared the cost with the bookstores. We continued to advertise, distribute, and defend the book, and we kept the issue alive through the press. Stories were carried regularly by UPI, AP, the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and Publishers Weekly, to name a few. I might add that the press was extremely important and had a significant role to play in putting pressure on the Post Office and informing the public.

  As Cy wrote in his book, The End of Obscenity, “The Post Office and other government agencies are part of the executive branch, but they also have legislative and judicial powers. Their legislative powers are exercised when they issue regulations, their judicial powers when they decide how the regulations apply to disputed situations.”30 Our Post Office hearing on May 14 certainly seemed to me like a trial. The presiding judicial officer, Charles D. Ablard, acted very much like a judge. Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield, who had instigated the proceedings and appointed the judicial officer and prosecutors, himself held a “theoretically judicial posture.”31 We were asked to present evidence that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not obscene. Grove Press, Readers’ Subscription, and the US Post Office were all represented by legal counsel.

  The Post Office official, using the language of the most recent Supreme Court ruling on obscenity, the Roth decision of 1957, found that the literary merit of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was “outweighed by the obscenity; that the dominant effect of the book, taken as a whole, is one which appeals to prurient interests.”32 He based this opinion on Lawrence having chosen sex as a central theme, and believed it was compounded by the author’s frank discussion of sexual intercourse and his use of four-letter words. The Post Office’s position was that the book was obscene “to the average person, applying contemporary community standards.”33 They rebutted our claim that they were acting as censor, saying they were merely executing the law and that they had exercised no prior restraint but had waited for the publication date to take action.

  I had chosen to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a challenge to the censors. Rembar and I did not simply want the book made available for sale, to defeat the Post Office. No, we wanted to “shrink the scope of anti-obscenity laws”34 by establishing our right to publish the book, arguing that such resided within the guarantees of the First Amendment. Rembar’s opening argument was that the Post Office was indeed functioning as a censor despite its denials. No fool, he knew that the best chance to win the case would be in a higher court, outside the jusrisdiction of the Post Office, and he accordingly built his argument for the record.

  Rembar, with eloquent authority, argued that Grove Press was a legitimate publisher that had delivered a literary masterpiece to the public in an appropriate manner. He presented Grove’s promotional materials to show that the company “was no fly-by-night trying to cash in on one big dirty book.”35 Introducing published advertisements, news articles and editorials, and book reviews, Rembar focused upon the concept that public opinion had already established a “community standard” approving Chatterley as a “major literary event.”36 Then he turned to experts to defend the novel’s artistry. The great cri
tic Malcolm Cowley, who had earlier revived the reputation and career of William Faulkner, spoke to the “literary and hortative ends toward which Lawrence aimed his novel, and the increasing frankness of current literature.”37 Alfred Kazin, another towering critical figure of the time, was called upon to discuss, in Rembar’s words, “a change in the range of tolerance in the general reading public over the past thirty years.”38 In my own concluding testimony I stated that my objective “as a publisher in a free marketplace [was to look for] stimulating, challenging, possibly profitable opportunities to publish good books” and that the public had grown beyond the legislation that now governed it:

  It occurred to me, and I am sure it occurred to many other publishers, that since the book was written in 1928 the emotional maturity of the American people has undergone a great change. … It occurred to me that it would be incomprehensible if this book were published today that the public would be shocked, offended, or would raise any outcry against it; but rather they would welcome it as the republishing, the bringing back to life, of one of our great masterpieces, and therefore I went ahead and published it. Thus far, all of my anticipated feelings have been rewarded with what I expected to happen as having happened, with the exception of this hearing.39

  The entire proceeding was conducted in one long day. Rembar requested that the ban be lifted while a decision was being written, but Ablard decided that this was not within his jurisdiction.