Unpublished authorial typescript - containing an original letter from Frieda Lawrence - about Johnston’s bibliographical pursuit of a disguised edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover which had been designed to evade US customs after the book was banned. We can find no record of this essay ever being published.
In the essay Johnston, a distinguished American printer (1899-1977, papers at the NYPL), reconstructs the chronology of Lady Chatterley’s publication and the furore around importation into the USA, arguing that Lawrence created a publication called Joy Go With You by ‘Norman Kranzler’ that contained the disguised text of Lady Chatterley.
When Johnston describes turning to Frieda Lawrence to confirm this, she responds in a letter tipped into the pamphlet: ‘I dimly remember some kind of a joke - Lawrence calling himself Norman Kranzler... There never was a book of Lawrence’s called Joy Go with You’ until Johnston subsequently presented her with a photostat of the title page (included here) whereupon she recalls in a second letter (photographed) that ‘he wrote it in Gstaad in Switzerland. The little printer had only enough type to print half the book...’
Quite the can of worms.
DESCRIPTION: Quarto size; limp blue book cloth covers. Typescript on yellow paper, [1] pp18, rectos only with an original letter by Frieda Lawrence and photographs of the a letter by D H Lawrence.
Johnston’s autograph corrections throughout and the essay signed ‘Paul Johnston’ in black ink at the end of the text with ‘New York City, 27 August, 1935’ typed below. A subsequent colophon page forbids reproduction of ‘the illustrative material’ - meaning the images of the letters. This copy also has the original of Frieda Lawrence’s letter to Johnston as well as a reproduction of a 1928 D H Lawrence letter about Joy Go With You, a photogaph of the title page of Joy Go with You and a further letter from Frieda Lawrence to a Mr Arens - also on the same subject.
