Edition of DH Lawrence novel used by Sir Lawrence Byrne in presiding over the landmark prosecution will be auctioned in October

A copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover used by the judge who presided over the novel’s 1960 obscenity trial, complete with annotations from his wife noting where DH Lawrence descended to writing about “love making”, is set to be auctioned this autumn, for the first time in 25 years.

The 1960 trial saw Penguin Books prosecuted for publishing the unexpurgated text of Lawrence’s novel. It was a test case for the Obscene Publications Act 1959, which ruled that a work was obscene if its effect “is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons”.

In its preliminary address, the prosecution asked: “Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters – because girls can read as well as boys – reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” The defence, in its turn, called 35 eminent literary figures to give their opinions on Lawrence’s treatment of sex, as well as his intentions.

Presiding judge Sir Lawrence Byrne’s wife, Lady Dorothy Byrne, read the novel for her husband, noting down the passages and pages that veered into sexually explicit areas – or, as she put it, “coarse” territory, or “love making”. She is also understood to have sewn the damask bag in which the copy was kept. Sotheby’s, which will auction the book, the notes and the bag on 30 October for an estimate of £10,000-15,000, said the blue-grey bag was “no doubt to prevent the press photographers from capturing the judge carrying a copy of the book”.

Byrne’s copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is “far from the only copy of the book to have been read with particular attention to the sex scenes, but as a document of the event, it is arguably the most important copy to have survived to this day,” said Sotheby’s, which described the trial as the most celebrated in British literary history.

The copy was previously sold in December 1993 for £4,370, then the highest price ever recorded for a paperback sold at auction. The purchaser was Christopher Cone, who bought it as a present for his partner, the late Stanley J Seeger. It is now being sold as part of a sale of property from their country home.

The trial jury took just three hours to return their “not guilty” verdict. Sotheby’s said that while Mr Justice Byrne’s “summing up had been fair … his private views were almost certainly glimpsed in his refusal to award costs, leaving the defendants with a substantial legal bill”. Penguin went on to sell out of its print run of 200,000 copies in a day, with sales reaching 2m in two years.

“It is very likely that the jurors were influenced by the fact that the novel was being published by an imprint that was held in great public affection. In effect, the trial and the book paved the way for the freedom of the written word,” said Sotheby’s.