Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Lawrence may have based Lady Chatterley's Lover on a notorious scandal: society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell's affair with "Tiger," a stonecarver. Juicy! (Source.)
"I've not taken ten minutes on Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!" –U.S. Senator Reed Smoot, reacting to the proposed lifting of a ban on obscene books. (Source.)
Within a year after England lifted the ban on Lady Chatterley's Lover, the book had sold two million copies—more than the Bible. Take that, ban. (Source.)
D. H. Lawrence married a German woman. During World War I, he and his wife were considered a threat to national security, and the British government refused to allow him to live near the nation's coast. Yowza. (Source)
"Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me) –/ Between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban/ And the Beatles' first LP." –Poet Phillip Larkin, in "Annus Mirabilis." So good.