The Rainbow. by LAWRENCE, D. H - 1915

London: Methuen & Co. Ltd,, 1915. Octavo. Original blue-green cloth, titles to spine in gilt and to front board in blind. Neat ownership initials to half-title verso. Touch of wear to spine ends and tips, small pierce to cloth to centre of front joint, water marks and a little rippling to front board and front matter, inner hinges starting but firm; a good copy. First edition. Methuen published The Rainbow in September 1915 in a print run of 2,527 copies, but quickly withdrew it from sale in the face of almost universal hostility. The Defence of the Realm Act gave the government powers to suppress anything held detrimental to the conduct of the war. Lawrence's explicit portrayal of the marital and sexual relations of three generations, with suggestions of lesbianism and male impotency in a career soldier, was strikingly out of step with the tenor of the times. In November 1915 the book was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. The presiding magistrate, Sir John Dickinson, who had lost his only son at the front six weeks earlier, condemned the book as utter filth and ordered it to be burned: "some 1,195 were destroyed" (Roberts & Poplawski). Roberts & Poplawski A7.