The Ministry of Justice is preparing to allow prisoners to receive books from their loved ones from early next month, following December’s high court ruling that the policy which prevented inmates from being sent books should be changed.

Months of protests by campaigners against rules that restricted inmates’ access to books preceded the high court ruling on a test case brought on behalf of a prisoner with a doctorate in English literature. “I see no good reason, in the light of the importance of books for prisoners, to restrict beyond what is required by volumetric control … and reasonable measures relating to frequency of parcels and security considerations,” ruled Mr Justice Collins in December.

A court order, which needs to be implemented by 31 January, asks the Ministry of Justice to amend the “incentives and earned privileges” instructions, introduced in November 2013, which currently state that “the general presumption will be that items for prisoners will not be handed in or sent in by their friends or families unless there are exceptional circumstances”, effectively ruling out books from being sent to those in jail. The high court wants books to be removed from the category of items that can’t be brought or sent into prisons, in recognition of the fact that they are not a privilege.

This means that prisoners should be able to receive books from 1 February, following months of campaigning by free speech groups and authors. A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman would not confirm that the ministry will implement the ruling without appeal, but the Guardian understands that preparations are already underway for the department to abide by the terms of the court order.

“The Ministry of Justice is not going to appeal. The restrictions on sending books in will end on 1 February. We would have liked it to be in time for Christmas,” said Samuel Genen, lawyer for Barbara Gordon-Jones, the inmate who brought the test case. “On 31st January they are going to amend the policy. One thing very explicit that we asked for was the idea that books should be a privilege be removed. We said books should never be a privilege.”

Supported by some of the UK’s highest-profile writers, from Philip Pullman to Carol Ann Duffy, the protests were sparked almost a year ago by Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, who revealed in March on the website Politics.co.uk that stringent rules from the Ministry of Justice were restricting prisoners’ access to books.

Justice secretary Chris Grayling insisted last year that there had been no policy changes “specifically about the availability of books in prisons”, and that “there have always been pretty tight rules about the receipt of parcels in prisons”, because “our prison staff fight a constant battle to prevent illicit items, such as drugs, extremist materials, mobile phones, SIM cards and pornography getting into our prisons”.

In an interview with the Tory blog Conservative Home, published on Wednesday, Grayling called the notion that there had been a ban on books a “fabrication by a left-wing pressure group”, adding that “the only change we actually pushed through was to harmonise the rules that existed across the prison system. There’s never been the freedom to send parcels into prisons.”

Asked “why weren’t you able to squash this campaign?”, he responded: “Oh I talked to them endlessly, but it’s the kind of thing where the left gets terribly excited … Oh it was infuriating. When something is lobbed at you which is completely untrue, sometimes if people carry on saying it, it’s believed. It was never true in the first place.”

But the current situation, according to Collins’s high court ruling, “does not go as far as [a ban] but … it amounts to a severe restriction on possession or acquisition of books which a prisoner can treat as his or her own”.

Genen said: “I have a large clientele of women prisoners, and when some of them were going through a very difficult period they sometimes asked for books. They would say crochet and knitting patterns – I could send those books in, and they would knit stuff. They always said it was really helpful, and it helped them focus, and not feel such distress. Of course it wasn’t always successful, but it did work with a lot of clients. Then from November, I couldn’t send in any books,” said Genen.

The lawyer added: “I want to be really clear: when Grayling says there is no ban on books, that is right. What it is is much much worse. The impact on prisoners is much worse - the restrictions for prisoners, as a result of this harmonisation of prison rules, on things like books, clothing, and basic necessities, are much more severe than they were.”

The Howard League and English PEN have jointly campaigned to reverse the ban, with the high profile Books For Prisoners campaign including a visit to Pentonville prison by a host of authors.

“It’s been a long road and it’s now a great relief that this draconian restriction on sending books to prisoners will be lifted,” added English PEN director Jo Glanville. “It’s been a waste of government time and money denying prisoners the possibility of receiving books which can only be a force for good.”

The high court ruling had been welcomed by campaigners in December, with poet laureate Duffy calling it “wise, just and irrefutably correct”, and the novelist Julian Barnes describing it as “a rare victory for common sense”.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said in a statement: “There never was a specific ban on books and the restrictions on parcels have been in existence across most of the prison estate for many years and for very good reason. Prisoners have access to the same public library service as the rest of us, and can buy books through the prison shop.

“We remain clear that we will not do anything that would create a new conduit for smuggling drugs and extremist materials into our prisons.”