Giuseppe Orioli

Who was Giuseppe Orioli?

Giuseppe "Pino" Orioli was a Florentine bookseller best known for privately publishing the unexpurgated first edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover and for his long association with Norman Douglas.

Giuseppe Orioli was born in 1884 in Alfonsine, the son of a shopkeeper. He moved to Florence to work in a barber shop when he was 14 years old. He later served in the military and lived in Paris and London for some time after leaving the military and before returning to Florence. In Florence he established a small shop that sold antique books.

Orioli's relationship with Norman Douglas began in Florence after Douglas settled there in 1922. Orioli undertook the private publication of many of Douglas' subsequent writings.

D.H. Lawrence had sought to have Lady Chatterley's Lover published conventionally by his publishers in England and the United States, but they were reluctant to undertake its publication because of its explicit sexual content. To circumvent censorship, Norman Douglas urged Lawrence to have the book published privately in Florence, and is believed to have introduced him to Orioli.