Hot Stuff: Getting Sex in the Library Available to Purchase

In either 1960 or '61, when I worked in the Acquisitions Department at the D.C Public Library, the Director killed an order for the recently‐published, unexpurgated edition of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The Library had stocked the abridged version, which some say is actually more suggestive—“hotter”—than the uncut edition. Professional selectors in the Fiction Department picked the new title. Nobody had objected to it, either in or outside the Library. But the Director canceled the order anyway, fearing that someone on the Congressional Committee that appropriated library funds might complain.