Blackwell Reference Online

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Thirty-seven years ago Richard Hoggart delivered his inaugural lecture at the University of Birmingham university. He presented it as a Professor of Modern English Literature, and he well deserved this title, having published a booklength study of the poet W. H. Auden a decade earlier. But even before he began to address his audience there in 1963 it was clear that Professor Hoggart did not fit the orthodox mold of literary scholarship. Though still only in his early forties, much of Hoggart's reputation rested on achievements other than the Auden book, and these marked him as one who moved outside the boundaries of literary criticism. Let me signal just three of these: 1) His memorable role in the much-publicized trial, late in 1960, of Penguin Books (under the terms of the then new Obscence Publications Act) over the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover . In this trial, and in face of hostile cross-examination which turned time and again to sexually explicit passages from the novel, Hoggart's defense of D. H. Lawrence as a “British non-conformist Puritan” whose concern was profoundly “decent,” was widely regarded as crucial to the acquittal of Penguin Books. Hoggart's sincerity, dignity, and calmly reasoned responses to the Prosecution marked him out as an especially effective advocate for the Defense (there is a notable exchange when Hoggart compares sexual expression in ... log in or subscribe to read full text