Samuel Roth
Samuel Roth | |
|---|---|
Sam Roth, right, in his book shop, Greenwich Village (1920) | |
| Born | 1893 "Nustscha" (now Nuszcze) near Zboriv, formerly Galicia now Ukraine |
| Died | July 3, 1974 |
| Pen name | Mshillim (Hebrew name), Norman Lockridge (alias), David Zorn (alias) |
| Period | 1919–1966 |
| Notable works | Published Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ulysses against U.S. censorship laws |
Samuel Roth (1893 - July 3rd, 1974) was an American publisher and writer. He was the plaintiff in the landmark 1957 case Roth v. United States, in which the United States Supreme Court redefined the constitutional test for determining which constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. It became a template for the liberalizing First Amendment decisions in the 1960s.
Roth spent nine years in jail on state and federal obscenity convictions, spending eight years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.