Right To Read Erotic Literature Turns 50

“For many decades, the courts let the Post Office decide which books people could read; then, suddenly, they didn’t.” Fifty years ago today, the publisher of Grove Press won a lawsuit against the Post Office, which had confiscated copies of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” The novel “had long been banned for its graphic sex scenes,” and the ruling set off “an explosion of free speech.”