Joan returns the office copy: Lady Chatterley's Lover
Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) · Sterling Cooper secretarial pool
The secretarial pool is passing around D. H. Lawrence, and the Chicago Public Library has Joan returning a borrowed copy. The women tell Peggy that men won't read it because it's romantic. Joan's review is that it shows people think marriage is a joke, which is a bold thing to say out loud in an office run by married men.
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The book
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lawrence's 1928 novel about an aristocrat's affair with her gamekeeper, kept out of U.S. stores uncut until a 1959 court ruling let Grove Press publish it. The season is set in 1960, so this copy is about as fresh as legal gets. Britain put Penguin on trial for printing it the same year.
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Sleuthed by @shelfsleuth · 2026-10-22
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Paused Tuesdays
One still, one stack, every Tuesday morning.
Also in Mad Men
All 26 books
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Don's Israel homework: ExodusS1 E6
Bert's recommendation: Atlas ShruggedS1 E8
Don's bar find: Meditations in an EmergencyS2 E1
Peggy's mother and the library copy: The Agony and the EcstasyS2 E2
Betty and the Fitzgerald stories: Babylon Revisited and Other StoriesS2 E4
Joy's morning after: The Sound and the FuryS2 E11
Sally reads to Grandpa Gene: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireS3 E3
Lane at the hospital: The Adventures of Tom SawyerS3 E6
Roger on Ogilvy: Confessions of an Advertising ManS3 E7
Betty in the bath: The GroupS3 E10
Sally's Newbery winner: The Twenty-One BalloonsS4 E5