Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press

Barney Rosset acquired the then fledgling Grove Press in 1951 and soon embarked on a career of publishing and political engagement on the barricades of free expression. The first American publisher of Samuel Beckett, Kenzaburo Oe, Tom Stoppard, Che Guevara, John Rechy, and Malcolm X, he went to the Supreme Court to break the obscenity ban on works of fiction such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch. Changing the course of literary history didn’t come without a price.