Lawrence, D.H. — Lady Chatterley's Lover

Florence, Italy, Privately Printed [by Samuel Roth], 1928. Pirated Edition. Hardcover. Size: 8vo 8" - 9" tall. Sturdy, attractive, tightly bound in hardcover format, simple octavo format, measuring 8 1/2" x 5 3/4" tall and wide, respectively, raspberry cloth over boards, generally clean of interior but for previous owner's inscription at first free endpaper and at front paste-down head, his bibliographic note, "[New York: piracy by Samuel Roth, ca. 1930]." Lightly toned of interior, minimal rubbing to extremities, paper title label still neatly affixed. Black and red printed font to title page, and 315 pp., all in. From the personal library of another gadfly and erotophile, the noted bibliographer and bibliophile, literary sleuth and book scout, Gershon Legman, as conveyed to me from his widow, the fabulous Judith Legman. Ms Legman has confirmed that this edition was pirated by Samuel Roth from the so-called William Faro edition. Roth's major biographer (and bibliographer), Jay A. Gertzman, notes that "Roth spent about of one-ninth of his adult life behind bars. He was a bold literary 'pirate,' issuing unauthorized editions of magnificent sensations such as Ulysses, My Life and Loves, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He was the chief mail order distributor of borderline erotica during the 1940s and 50s. He had been vilified by the literary community of two nations in the 1920s for the Lawrence and Joyce publications. In the absence of an international copyright agreement and because works deemed obscene could not be copyrighted, what Roth did was not illegal. It was in violation of the protocols of mutual fair dealing between publishers and authors. The Ulysses 'piracies' got him drummed out of legitimate professional standing in a way that had never before happened: an International Protest signed by over 160 fellow writers" (from the Introduction to Samuel Roth: Poet, Pirate, Pornographer). All in, a good, solid copy of an important novel and by an important, if rogue publisher, from the library of a giant of bibliography and erotica, Gershon Legman.Member, I.O.B.A., C.B.A., and adherent to the highest ethical standards. . . . Very Good