`Lolita' Douglas Woodruff, Derek Parker Censorship of Plays Richard Findlater
The Books Bill Sir Alan Herbert Censorship in Ireland Oliver Edwards The Pensions Debate R. H. S. Grossman, MP Meeting the People Silvan Jones Papal Infallibility I. L. A. Hartley, William Reeves Roads to Nowhere John Allan May John Gordon Wolf Mankowitz Derriere-garde Robert Layton, T. E. Bean Litter R. W. Wilde The Middle East Henry Adler
`LOLITA'
SIR,—The point of my letter about Lolita to The Times was quite simple. I think the Courts of Law are the proper places where the legal fate of books should be decided. I do not think that Lolita should be lifted out of the reach of the Law by having literary merit pleaded on its behalf in advance. I do pot think anybody should try to confer certificates of Mimunity, a kind of parallel to the inmmunity ex- tended to diplomats.
1 am glad to see that Mr. Nigel Nicolson on Saturday in Bournemouth took the same view, that it is for the courts to say whether a book has over- stepped the permissible limits. How comes it you can say I am asking that my unfavourable view of the book should take precedence of the views of the signatories whose letter I was criticising for telling the legal authorities to keep away? You say they were merely asking that 'people should have the chance of reading the book before denouncing it; but they were saying that because of its literary merit it should neither be denounced nor proceeded against.
When you say that every book is innocent until adjudged guilty, arc you forgetting that the distribu- tor of Lolita, who pleaded guilty, was convicted of distributing an obscene libel and fined accordingly at Bow Street in April and OctolNr, 1956? The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis in his memorandum to the Select Committee on the Obscene Publications Bill put Lolita first in the list of what he called 'the usually quite disgusting' pub- lications of the Olympia Press of Paris.
A further trial before an edition is printed here, such as Mr. Nicolson suggests, can save the pub- lishers a lot of money, but it may prevent the genbral public from making up its own mind, as you want. If there is then sufficient outcry, but only then, when the book has been in and out of the bookshops, Would it be proper for the Public Prosecutor to step, in. Either there should be no public proceedings on grounds of obscenity, or they should be brought as early as possible.
In the Tablet editorial, I do not say that literary critics and writers should not express a view on literary merit. That would, indeed, be an odd thing to say. What I say is that their view is not to be taken as closing the matter as far as the law is concerned. Literary merit and author's intent arc relevant factors in the judgment that juries may be called upon to make. But they do not by themselves settle the issue of the degree of obscenity and indecency that the law should tolerate.—Yours faithfully,
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