Lady C – Libraries
Who borrowed it? Who spilt coffee on it? Who stole it? Who left it in a taxi? Who dog-eared the pages? Whose dog chewed a corner? Who underlined those particular words? Who wrote ‘Yes!’ in the margin? Who left that florid love-letter inside it as a bookmark? And what is that brown stain?
My book Lady C is, among other things, a celebration of libraries. They play an important part in the book, and many people first encountered Lawrence’s book by finding it in a library. In fact, Lady Chatterley’s Lover caused some dilemmas for libraries as they had to decide whether, and how, to stock it. When the unexpurgated edition was published, would the book be on open shelves, or would the public have to request it? Which librarians would be allowed to handle it? And if library books weren’t being borrowed or stolen, they were being scribbled in. One type of annotation was the message at the front of the book telling you that it’s a dirty book and helpfully telling you which pages to turn to – when you turned to them, those pages might, alas, have been torn out. Then there are the books about Lawrence. Books about Lawrence from the 1960s and 70s often now remain untouched as records of a lost primitive civilisation, gathering dust, waiting for the occasional visitor, some archaeologist of sorts who will unearth these fragments, blow off the layer of dust from ‘the age of Lawrence’ and try to decipher the handwritten pencil messages in the margins.
In May I was pleased to be able to give a talk at Olton Library, the library I used as a child and where I first borrowed Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Here below is a selection of some of the libraries with copies of Lady C. The book is available in a number of countries. Do let me know if your library has a copy (and if it doesn’t, do ask your library to acquire a copy).
Canada:
Germany:
Iraq:
UK:
USA:
Lawrence Public Library, Kansas
Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library
