Pornography and obscenity

It is clear from a letter of  April , written in Mallorca, that Lawrence had been invited to contribute an article to This Quarter, a new magazine soon to be launched in Paris by Edward Titus who, in the followingmonth,wouldpublish an ‘UnabridgedPopular Edition’ of  LadyChatterley’sLover.TheLawrenceshadarrived inMallorcaonlyon  April, having left Paris on the th. Lawrence himself was exhausted from his four-week stay in Paris: he had been negotiating with Titus overLady Chatterley’sLover, with theCrosbys over their edition ofThe Escaped Cock, with Albert Boni about his American publications and,  in addition, satisfying the diverse social demands placed on a celebrated writer in the French capital. From Paris he and Frieda made their way toMallorca via Orléans, Lyons,Carcassonne, Perpignan andBarcelona. So, writing to Titus on  April, Lawrence could reasonably plead that he was ‘too unsettled for the moment’ (Letters, vii. ) but would  not forget Titus’s invitation. Nor did he. Ten days later he sent the manuscript of ‘Pornography andObscenity’ to Nancy Pearn for typing. He also agreed toTitus’s request that the articlewas not to be offered for publication by ‘anybody else, either in England or America’ (vii. ). Lawrence knew that Titus would not ‘be able to pay much’ (vii. )  but he regarded the article as a friendly gesture in return for Titus’s willingness to bring out the Paris edition of ‘Our Lady’. The article (of about ,words) duly appeared in This Quarter, in the issue covering July–September . Titus had not been slow to recognise Lawrence’s notoriety following  police action over Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Pansies typescripts, in January , and the consequent Parliamentary debate on February about the censorship of documents regardedbyofficialdomas ‘obscene’. When to these events were added the police raid on theWarren Gallery and the confiscation of some Lawrence paintings in July, he became –  from a publisher’s viewpoint – irresistible as a person to give vent to his feelings on censorship. Faber & Faber seized the opportunity. In late August or earlySeptember they invitedLawrence towrite on the subject for their Criterion Miscellany; unknown to him, they also invited the