The Rainbow

I am presently re-reading what I consider to be one of the most beautiful books in the English language: The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence.

But regardless of what I consider to be the book's beauty and innocence; two months after its publication in 1915, copies were seized and suppressed under the 1857 Obscene Publications Act. Prosecutor Herbert Muskett declared that “although there might not be an obscene word to be found in the book, it was in fact a mass of obscenity of thought, idea, and action”.

Lawrence wasn't present at the trial; he wasn't even told it was taking place. He later heard about it through newspaper reports. Over one thousand copies of The Rainbow were burned by court order outside the Royal Exchange.

I quote from Herbert Reads essay The Problem with Pornography. 

"...The effect on Lawrence was disastrous...He felt as if the very springs of creation had been blocked by ignorant but powerful forces...How could he go on writing with this threat of suppression continually before him...Such an inhibition cannot be tolerated by any creative artist." 

But as followers of the serialization of my book Notes on the Nude will gather, nothing has changed!

My original Penguin copy of The Rainbow got lost and I replaced it with a recent re-print (Lawrence's copyright is now in the public domain). But the publishers of the re-print are taking no chances on being blocked by the censors. Hence the cautious and irrelevant front cover illustration.