When the British had an Empire

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One of my favorite books is Lady Chatterly's Lover. Not abstractly or generally, but rather concretely. Among the books that are physically in my library this is one of my favorites. Not because of the story, which I imagine is very good (I've never read it), but because of some special characteristic it has. The edition I have was published in Sweden in 1950. Thanks to obscenity laws, it wasn't published in England until 1960. The wonderful thing about this edition is that on the inside front cover it says, "The sale of this book is prohibited in the United States of America and the British Empire." That last bit really impressed me. I had in my hands a little book that, like David, dared to challenge an empire. That's why I love this book. Its like an artifact, as if in an archaeological excavation they had discovered the very stones that David used to knock out Goliath.

I found it many years ago in a small Jewish library in New York. I paid $2.50 for it. What a jewel! Unfortunately it suffered an accident. I was living in Boston at the time and was getting ready for my move to Mexico (where I now live). I had almost all my books stored in boxes in the basement. I was working then at the Harvard Bookstore and one day during work this huge storm came out of nowhere and dumped a deluge of water. My roommate called me to tell me the basement was filling with water. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi but got home quickly and found the basement knee-high with water. I've never worked so hard in my life hauling those boxes out of the basement. I lost a good many books that had to be thrown away, but Lady Chatterly's Lover survived. Its safely here with me in Mexico, with some water stains, with the price written on the inside cover in pencil, and that wonderful and arrogant warning of a lost empire.
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