‘Lady Chatterley’ copy from famous trial sells for $72,000

LONDON — A paperback copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” used by the judge in the landmark U.K. obscenity trial of the novel’s publisher has sold at auction for 56,250 pounds ($72,000), more than three times its pre-sale estimate.

The tattered Penguin paperback — along with a damask bag designed to stop photographers snapping the judge carrying the scandalous tome — sold to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby’s in London on Tuesday.

Penguin Books was prosecuted in 1960 for publishing D.H. Lawrence’s novel about an affair between a wealthy woman and her husband’s gamekeeper, a landmark in the frank literary depiction of sexuality.

A prosecution lawyer infamously asked in court whether it was “a book that you would … wish your wife or your servants to read?”