Joan Bennett (literary scholar)

Joan Bennett (1896–1986), also known as Joan Frankau and born Aline Frankau, was a Cambridge literary scholar and critic. She was among the "constellation of critics" called by the defence in the Lady Chatterley Trial of D. H. Lawrence.

Bennett was the daughter of London cigar importer Arthur Frankau (1849-1904) and writer Julia Frankau (1859-1916). Though she was known as Joan throughout her life, she was christened Aline. She married the Cambridge literary historian Henry Stanley Bennett (1889-1972) in 1920.

As a don at Girton College, Cambridge, Bennett wrote one of the first critical studies of Virginia Woolf.

As one of the expert witnesses in the Lady Chatterley Trial, she helped counter the arguments of the prosecution by confirming Lawrence's reputation as a novelist, that the work was more than a description of sexual encounters, and that Lawrence's repeated use of ‘four-letter words’ were justified by literary intent. Bennett's mother had earlier been credited by Mrs Belloc Lowndes with having been "one of the very few to recognise the genius of D. H. Lawrence".

Publications by Joan Bennett include—

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