What were some controversial novels from the 1950s?

Answer 1

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence effectively went on trial in the UK when Penguin Books republished it and were prosecuted for doing so. Obviously, it had been written (and banned) many years before. As the whole business spilled into 1960, this is perhaps cheating. http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/happybirthdaypenguin/html/1.html

"Peyton Place" by Grace Metalious caused a stir, particularly when it was filmed.

"Room at the Top" by John Braine was another book which caused a stir.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (Putnam, $5.00)—first issued in 1955 by an unorthodox Paris press after being rejected by a string of American publishers; banned by the French government, presumably out of solicitude for immature English-speaking readers (the ban was later quashed by the French High Court); pronounced unobjectionable by that blue-nosed body, the U. S. Customs office; and heralded by ovations from writers, professors, and critics on both sides of the Atlantic.


The first production of John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" in 1956 provoked a major controversy. There were those, like the Observer newspaper's influential critic Kenneth Tynan, who saw it as the first totally original play of a new generation. There were others who hated both it and the world that Osborne was showing them. But even these critics acknowledged that the play, written in just one month, marked a new voice on the British stage. I count this as a book, as I had to study it at school. (Sorry, you asked for novels!)

Answer 2

1984

Answer 3

Lolita "that famous book by Nabokov", 1955

Catcher in the Rye--not nearly as controversial--JD Salinger, 1951

Answer 4

Lolita. Tropic of Cancer.