R v Penguin Books Ltd

R v. Penguin Books Ltd ("Regina versus Penguin Books Limited") was the public prosecution in the UK at the Old Bailey of Penguin Books under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for the publication of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The trial took place over six days in No 1 court between 20 October and 2 November 1960 with Mervyn Griffith-Jones prosecuting, Gerald Gardiner counsel for the defence and Mr Justice Byrne presiding. The trial was a test case of the defence of public good provision under section 4 of the Act which was defined as a work "in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern".

The jury found for the defendant in a result that ushered in the liberalisation of publishing, and which some saw as the beginning of the permissive society in Britain.

The Obscene Publications Bill was first put before the UK Parliament in 1955 as a private member's bill on the recommendation of the Herbert Committee in response to what was seen as the failure of the existing common law offense of obscene libel. The Bill’s sponsor Roy Jenkins cited five prosecutions in 1954 which highlighted the uncertainty of the law on obscenity and that the basis of the existing law, R v Hicklin, had the effect of a stringent literary censorship. Consequently, the resultant Act made specific provision for a defence of public good, broadly defined as a work of artistic or scientific merit, intended to exclude literature from the scope of the law while still permitting the prosecution of pornography or such works which would under section 2 of the Act ”tend to deprave and corrupt persons likely to read it”. The Act also required the court to consider the work as a whole, put a time limit on prosecutions, provided booksellers with a defence of innocent dissemination, gave publishers a right of defence against a destruction order, provided the right of appeal, and limited the penalty of conviction. The Act came into force on 30 August 1959.

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