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Lady Chatterley and the Monk: Anglican Radicals and the Lady Chatterley Trial of 1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2008

MARK ROODHOUSE
MARK ROODHOUSE
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD; e-mail: mr19@york.ac.uk
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Abstract

The trial of Penguin Books for publishing an unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's lover is a symbolic episode in histories of 1960s Britain, used to illustrate changes in social attitudes. However, historians have not appreciated the impact of the trial on Anglican attitudes towards contemporary society. Using correspondence in the papers of the Mirfield father and literary critic Martin Jarrett-Kerr, this article reveals the tensions within a loose coalition of Anglican radicals just as their views began to receive attention in the media. Jarrett-Kerr and fellow liberal Anglo-Catholics found themselves in an uneasy alliance with Liberal Anglicans, whose views were conflated with those of the radicals.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 475 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

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12 Information culled from Jarrett-Kerr's school records in the Cheltenham College archive by Jill Barlow.

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73 ‘Christians do not make jokes about sex for the same reason that they do not make jokes about Holy Communion, not because it is sordid, but because it is sacred, and I think Lawrence tried to portray this relation as in a real sense as something sacred, as in a real sense as an act of holy communion, lower case of course’: C. H. Rolph (ed.), The trial of Lady Chatterley: Regina v. Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth 1961, 70–1; James, Life of Bishop Robinson, 101.

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87 Archbishop of Canterbury's Group on Divorce Law, Putting asunder: a divorce law for contemporary society, London 1966, 10; Lewis, Jane and Wallis, Patrick, ‘Fault, breakdown, and the Church of England's involvement in the 1969 divorce reform’, Twentieth Century British History xi (2000), 308–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.