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Banned Books

 A Chronological Collection of
 Banned Books
The 1700s


  		An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding.  In 1700, the Catholic Church placed John Locke's An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, where it remained until 1951. 
An Essay argues that the minds of all newborns are blank slates and that all ideas and thoughts are developed from experience.  As a corrollary, Locke maintained that people have no innate principles including no sense that God should be worshipped.  He pointed out that mankind does not even agree on a conception of God or even whether or not God exists.

The Shortest Way with the Dissenters.  In 1702, during the height of a debate in the House of Commons as to how to detect Dissenters that hid their religious beliefs in order to secure government office, Daniel Defoe published a satirical sermon, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, in which he pretended to be a high official within the Anglican Church and advocated "Now, Let Us Crucify The Thieves!" and build a foundation for the church upon "the destruction of her enemies."  His essay outraged all parties who missed the satire, and all copies of his sermon, "being full of false and scandalous Reflections upon this Parliament, and tending to promote Seditions, [were ordered to be] burnt [by] the common Hangman. . . ."  When it was finally revealed that Defoe wrote the essay as satire, he was fined, pilloried, and jailed in Newgate Prison.

Gulliver's Travels.  If you browse any site on the internet that discusses banned books, or if you view almost any library display during the ALA's Banned Book Week, you will inevitably see Johnathan Swift's classic satire, Gulliver's Travels (the real title, by the way, is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World), listed as having been banned in one form or another almost from it's date of publication in 1726.  This claim, however, doesn't seem to be supported by any evidence.  Actually, the book was incredibly popular, and as Alexander Pope noted it was "universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery."  Even one of Swift's harshest critics, Samuel Johnson, admitted that

It was received with such avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made; it was read by the high and the low, the learned and illiterate. Criticism was for a while lost in wonder; no rules of judgment were applied to a book written in open defiance of truth and regularity.

So, from where does this notion that the book was banned arise?  Most likely from a lecture published in Victorian England by William Makepeace Thackeray in which he branded parts of the work as "gibbering shrieks, and gnashing imprecations against mankind--
tearing down all shreds of modesty, past all sense of manliness and shame; filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene."  While that may be true, there is no record of the book having ever been banned, although children's editions are invariably expurgated.

Sorrows of Young Werther.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's classic story about suicide, Sorrows of Young Werther,  was published in 1744 and became very popular throughout Europe.  Most of the book is written as diary entries that describe the depression of a young man.  In the final chapter, Goethe switches to the third person and describes Werther's suicide in graphic detail.  When a number of copycat suicides occurred, the book was condemned by the Lutheran Church, after which it was banned in Denmark, Germany, and Italy.

Fanny Hill.  In 1748, John Cleland was arrested and sent to debtors' prison after a failed business venture.  There, he wrote the erotic novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill), that was to become synonymous with the censorship of "obscene" materials.  The book was published in two installments while Cleland remained in prison, however after his release he, along with the publisher, was arrested in November of 1749 and charged with "corrupting the King's subjects."  Both were released after Cleland publicly renounced the book--as originally written--and it was withdrawn from print.  After Cleland removed the most objectionable passages from the book, including one that described Fanny's witnessing of a homosexual encounter between two men, he was allowed to publish an expurgated edition.  The original version was also officially banned in the United States in 1821 and remained so until 1966 when the United States Supreme Court ruled that it should be allowed to be published as it did not violate the Roth Standard for obscenity.

Tom Jones.  Another title that appears so frequently on banned books lists you would think it almost impossible to have ever survived is Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (more usually referred to as simply Tom Jones), which was published in 1749.  The book is a collection of earthy, ribald, exciting, and humorous stories that include prostitution and promiscuity.  Yet, as with Gulliver's Travels, there is no documentation that it was banned upon publication or later by the United Kingdom or by the Catholic Church.  Neither is there any documentation that it was ever banned by the United States.  There are, however, several references to it having been banned in France, but these are not substantiated with any details or sources.  Again, like Gulliver's Travels, references to its banning may be based on the published opinion of another author, Samuel Johnson, who once wrote to a friend, "I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book . . . I scarcely know a more corrupt work."

Paradise Lost.  John Milton published his epic poem, Paradise Lost, in 1667 as, perhaps in part, a reflection on the defeat of Cromwell's revolution and the restoration of the monarchy.  In it, not only does Milton attempt to reconcile some elements of pagan and Christian tradition, but he portrays Satan somewhat heroically as a proud, but sympathetic, character who defies a rather tyrannical God and then wages an unsuccessful war on His heavenly forces.  It is surprising that the Catholic Church did not ban Milton's work sooner, but it was not placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum until 1758.

Candide, or Optimism, was pseudonymously authored by François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) in 1759.  That it was not popular with the Church almost goes without saying as in it there is a short reference to a fictional Pope being the father of one characters.  More damning perhaps was its hilarious and scathing satirical attack on Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz's philosophy of optimism, which argues that since God is perfect and God created everything in the world, then everything in the world is perfect.  It was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1762.  


Emile, or On Education.  In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau published Emile, or On Education, a philosophical novel that he considered to be his best and most important work.  In it, he addresses what he believed to be the essential philosophical and political questions regarding the relationship between naturally good individuals and the inherently corrupt societies within which they live.  In doing so, Rousseau created the first philosophy of Western education.  The book was banned and burned immediately upon its publication in both Paris and Geneva, primarily for the short and then infamous section, "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar," in which Rousseau describes both his religious views and a method for teaching them.

The Marriage of Figaro.  Pierre Beaumarchais published the second volume in his trilogy of Figaro plays, The Marriage of Figaro, in 1781.  Although it was originally approved by France's state censor, King Louis XVI personally found the work's satire of the aristocracy offensive and immoral.  He imposed a ban on the play and had Beaumarchais imprisoned for a short time.  Upon his release, Beaumarchis repeatedly rewrote the play in an attempt to please Louis, and in 1784, the king finally lifted his ban.  The play was first performed later that year and became immensely popular, even among the aristocracy.  Mozart's opera of the same name was based on Beaumarchais play and premiered in 1786.

The Age of Reason.  Thomas Paine began his two-volume classic, The Age of Reason, while imprisoned in revolutionary France in 1793 awaiting the guillotine for protesting the execution of King Louis XVI.  Paine was a deist, and although he rejected supernatural religions like Christianity, he believed in a rational universe created a benevolent God that operated on logical principles.  The Age of Reason expresses Paine's beliefs and aggressively argues against Judeo-Christian religions and details the numerous inconsistencies within both the Old and New Testaments.  Interestingly, the book was banned in France because it was viewed as too religious and in England because its biblical challenges were viewed as too atheistic. 
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