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 Illuminations and Epiphanies

Banned Books

 A Chronological Collection of
 Banned Books
The 1900s

 Three Weeks.  Founded in 1878 by John Frank Chase, the Watch and Ward Society of Boston's stated goal was to "watch and ward off evildoers," specifically in the arts and literature.  Although this society of do-gooders was never effective in getting the government to ban books, it did intimidate the Boston Public Library from purchasing some titles as well as removing some already purchased books from circulation.  Generally, though, the society was regarded as a joke, and publishers could guarantee additional sales of a book by announcing that it had been "banned in Boston."  The society only was able to instigate one successful court case, in 1907, that resulted in a single title, Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks, being branded as obscene.   Among the titles it was unsuccessful in getting a court to ban were:  Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, Mosquitos by William Faulkner, Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, Oil by Upton Sinclair, and God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell.


What Every Girl Should Know.  In 1912, the U.S. Post Office, the executive agent for enforcing the Comstock Act, banned the publication of Margaret Sanger's column, "What Every Girl Should Know," in the weekly newspaper, The New York Call.  Although the column included information on puberty, reproduction, and birth control, it was an article about syphilis that drew the attention of government censors.  Several years later, the information that Sanger had published in her columns was released in pamphlet form as part of the famous Little Blue Book series.  Although Sanger's effort to spread the word about birth control were exceptional, in recent years, her motives for doing so have been tarnished by research that revealed her support of eugenics and the mandatory sterilization of the "unfit" as well as entire groups of peoples who had shown themselves to be "irresponsible and reckless." Other writings and speeches by Sanger and her cohorts clearly have revealed that she specifically included Catholics and African-Americans in these groups.  Not surprisingly, publication of this research, such as Killer Angel by George Grant, has occasionally been banned by local librarians in an effort to protect Sanger's reputation. 

Can Such Things Be.  Ambrose Bierce's collection of eerie supernatural tales, Can Such Things Be, is another title that seems to appear on every "banned books" list despite never having been banned.  Frequently it is claimed that the War Department banned the title from military libraries during World War I along with numerous other "disturbing" and "pacifist" books.  Although the War Department did bar about thirty titles from camp libraries contained in a list known as the Army "Index," those books were all pro-German or anarchist publications.  Interestingly, the number of books banned by the War Department was far smaller than the number of titles that librarians around the country removed from shelves on their own without any directive or suggestion from any government activitiy.  Although the American Library Association (ALA) had proclaimed neutrality before the United States entered World War I in 1917, the organization and its members, in fact, showed a decided anti-German bias.  When President Wilson finally brought the United States into the conflict, the ALA eagerly and aggressively supported his war effort, and librarians from throughout the country purged their libraries of pro-German works and works by German authors. Typical was Mr. Edwin H. Anderson, the director of the New York Public Library, who stated that "If Satan wrote a pro-German book we should want it for our reference shelves.  It might be of use to future historians.  But in the circulating department we exclude all pro-German books, and have done so since the beginning of the war.  We go over the books from time to time and take out those that are objectionable."
  Ulysses.  James Joyce began writing his modernist classic, Ulysses, in 1914 and beginning in 1918, it was serialized in the American journal, The Little Review.  The following year its serialization began in the English journal, The Egoist.  While Joyce's seemingly disjointed combination of streams of consciousness, puns, jokes, and satire, may have been regarded as bizarre, it wasn't until 1920, when a chapter describing Leopold Bloom (the main character) masturbating while fixating upon the legs of a woman, that it ran afoul of a group of moralistic busybodies known as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which took legal action to keep the book out of the United States. The ongoing story was declared obscene in a trial the following year, and further publication was prohibited.  The United Kingdom followed suit, and the novel was also blacklisted by Irish customs.  Ulysses remained banned in the United States until 1933.

We.  In 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin published his classic dystopian novel, We, which chronicled the oppressive nature of of a futuristic Marxist totalitarian society organized upon basic mathematical principles, where people moved and thought in lockstep and sexual contact was strictly regulated.  It was immediately banned in the Soviet Union.



The Bible and The Koran.  From 1926 until 1956, the publication and importation of both the Bible and the Koran were prohibited in the Soviet Union.

The Well of Loneliness.  Radclyffe Hall published the first lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, in 1928.  Knowing that the subject matter was potentially explosive, Hall submitted her manuscript to numerous publishers.  Its reception was generally mixed with many editors finding its mediocre style and writing more of a drawback than its subject matter.  One publisher, Jonathan Cape, agree to publish the book, and the first three weeks it was on the market were uneventful.  Then, James Douglas, the editor of the British tabloid newspaper, The Daily Express, discovered the book.  Douglas was fanatical moralist and launched a poster, billboard, and newspaper campaign to have the book banned.  He called on the publisher to withdraw the book and asked the Home Secretary to ban it.  Jonathon Cape immediately contacted the Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, sent him a copy, and requested his opinion.  Within two days, Cape had an answer.  The Home Secretary found that the book was "gravely detrimental to the public interest" and threatened the publisher with criminal charges if it did not immediately withdraw the book.  Cape agreed but attempted to publish the book through a French subsidiary and then import it back into England.  The printings were intercepted and confiscated and an obscenity trial ensued.  In the end, the court determined that the book was, indeed, obscene and that all copies were to be destroyed.  The book was never banned in the United States.

Call of the Wild.  In 1929, the fascist government of Italy banned Jack London's Call of the Wild, without providing any rationale.  Unlike other of London's works, the book is without any political content or point-of-view, so it has been suggested that the banning was simply because of London's Marxist reputation.

A Farewell to Arms.  In 1929, Italy also banned Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms for its vivid description of the Italian Army's disgraceful retreat following the Battle of Caporetto during World War I.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  The Soviet Union banned Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1929 "for occultism."  As there are no occult themes in any of the collected stories, it is likely that the Soviet Union was referring to Doyle's personal belief in the occult--Doyle also believed in fairies--rather than any specific part of the book. 

Alice in Wonderland.  Numerous banned book websites report that Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There) was banned in China's Hunan province in 1931, because "animals should not use human language" and it "put animals and human beings on the same level."  It appears that this is actually true, and the books were banned by the provincial governor.

All Quiet on the Western Front.  On 10 May 1933, the newly elected Nazi Party staged a massive burning of un-German books--i.e., books written overwhelmingly, but not exclusively by  Jewish authors--that had been stripped from libraries and stores throughout Berlin.  Similar burnings followed in other cities throughout the Germany.  The first list of specific authors and works to be banned and/or burned throughout the Reich was included in an article titled, "Principles for the Cleansing of Public Libraries," published a week later in Germany's leading library journal.  One of the few non-Jewish authors whose works were banned primarily for their anti-war points-of-view was Erich Maria Remarque, however at the time, Nazi propaganda claimed he was of French Jewish descent. 

The Storm of Steel.  Ernst Junger served in the German Army during World War One, and in 1918, he became the youngest man ever to be awarded the Blue Max.  Following the war, he published a candid and brutally honest memoir describing war in the trenches, however it was widely criticized by pacifists for its rather neutral point-of-view and Junger's claim that warfare, "for all its destructiveness, was an incomparable schooling of the heart."  The book was also condemned by the Nazi Party, and Junger was prohibited from publishing any new printings after 1934.  The Nazis viewed Junger--an ardent nationalist--as a threat, for although he had little use for democratic institutions, he thought even less of socialism, especially the brand of socialism practiced by the Nazis.  Despite his dislike for the Nazis, Junger served again as an officer during World War Two.  He was implicated as a fringe participant in the von Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Hitler, but somehow Junger avoided execution.  Following the war, the occupying British forces continued the Nazi's ban of Junger's works.

The Grapes of Wrath.  In 1939, John Steinbeck published his classic novel, Grapes of Wrath, that portrayed the plight of "Okies" who had been displaced by drought from their farms in Oklahoma and struggled to survive as migrant farm workers in Kern County, California.  Immediately following its publication, the book came under attack by the Associated Farmers of California who branded Steinbeck's portrayal of native Californians' treatment of the Okies as a "pack of lies."  The group found considerable support within the offended population of Kern County, and the county's board of supervisors officially banned the book.  The ban remained in place for eighteen months until it was removed in January of 1941.

The Naked and the Dead.  When the 25-year-old combat veteran and Harvard graduate, Norman Mailer, published his classic World War Two novel, The Naked and the Dead, in 1949, it was an immediate best seller.  Although Mailer substituted the word "fug" for "fuck," his otherwise true-to-life use of soldiers' vernacular still offended many readers, and some critics called for the book to be banned.  Despite the outcry, the book was not banned in the United States or in the United Kingdom.  It was, however, banned for its language in Canada and Australia.

Censorship Publications Board of Ireland.  On 18 December 1953, the Censorship of Publications Board of Ireland banned almost 100 publications on the grounds that they were indecent or obscene.  Included in this list were Anatole France's Mummer's Tale, All of John Steinbeck's work, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Across the River and into the Trees, all of Emile Zola works, C.S. Forester's African Queen, and almost everything written by William Faulkner.  Ireland was once described as "the fiercest censorship this side of the Iron Curtain."  Even though Ireland has somewhat lightened it's application of internal censorship laws, it remains right at the top of the censor list.

Doctor Zhivago.  Boris Pasternak was the son of prominent Russain Jewish artists; his father, a painter and mother, a concert pianist.  His modernist poetry recieved acclaim within Russia and abroad.  Unlike many of his friends, Pasternak was excited about prospects for Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution, and he adjusted his style--to the dismay of critics--and began to write poetry to appeal to the proletariat.  Following the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, Pasternak became critical of the Communists although his love for Russia never diminished.  Before he ever finished Doctor Zhivago, a philosophical love story set in middle of the Russian Revolution, he knew that it would be banned by Soviet authorities and made arrangements to have it smuggled into Italy for printing.  Upon publication, the book became an international best-seller.  Of course it was banned in Russia, and many in the Communist Party called for Pasternak's imprisonment or exile.  When Pasternak was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, he declined the award because he felt that if he left Russia to receive it, he would not be allowed to return.  Doctor Zhivago was not allowed to be sold or read in Russia until 1987.

Lady Chatterley's Lover.  D.H. Lawrence finished his novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, a story of a married but sexually frustrated aristocratic woman who finds physical satisfaction with the gamekeeper of her  husband's estate, in 1920.  Its subject matter and, more importantly, frequent use of the word "fuck" prevented its publication in England, so Lawrence had it privately printed in Italy.  In 1960, Penguin Books, published the book in the United Kingdom as a test of the newly passed obscenity law that permitted publication of otherwise obscene works it could be demonstrated that they were of "literary merit."  The court determined that the book had enough literary merit to be published.  A similar trial and appeal in the United States in 1959 had similar results.

Decent Interval.  In 1977, Frank Snepp, an intelligence analyst who had spent over five years in Saigon, published a critical examination of what he considered to be CIA blunders and mismanagement following the Paris Peace Accords of 1973 between North and South Vietnam.  Between 1973 and 1975, Snepp had rightly and repeatedly forecast to his supervisors the horrendous affect that those one-sided accords and the subsequent U.S. abandonment of South Vietnam for domestic political reasons would have upon the region, especially the population of South Vietnam.  When the tumultuous end came in April of 1979, Snepp's common-law Vietnamese wife committed suicide and killed their child rather than run the risk not being able to escape .  Snepp, who was evacuated, wrote his memoir partly in an attempt to ease the pain of his loss, but also to demonstrate the impact of the loss of U.S. resolve.  After the unclassified book was published, Snepp was fired from his job and sued for violation of his "non-disclosure" employment agreement with the CIA that precluded the publication of any CIA information without the agency's formal approval.  Snepp's case was eventually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, and he lost on all counts.  Snepp was required to give all past and future profit from the book to the U.S. Treasury and ordered to never again write anything--fact or fiction--related to his professional past without first submitting the materials to the CIA for review.

Katherine the Great.  In 1979, Deborah Davis, published a scathing and partially untrue biography of Katherine Graham, the legendary "establishment leftist" publisher of the Washington Post.  Among other things, Davis accused Graham of being a stooge for the CIA in a supposed attempt to control the free press.  Graham, in turn used her immense power within publishing circles to have all 20,000 copies of Davis's book removed from store shelves and turned into pulp.  Davis fought back in a successful lawsuit, and the book was re-released to critical scorn in 1991.

Peter Rabbit.  After "Red Ken" Livingstone's Marxist Labour Party took control of the Greater London Council in 1981, one of leftist regime's first acts was to ban Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories from the city.  The Council had determined that the rabbits and other animals were too middle class and did not adequately represent the proletariat. 

Did Six Million Really Die?  Several countries-- including Austria, Canada, France, and Germany--have not just banned but actually criminalized the publication of books that governmental authorities judge to demean minority groups.  During the 1980s, Canada twice indicted and convicted Ernst Zundel for publishing a 1974 book by Richard Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die? that challenged the generally accepted extent of the Jewish Holocaust by the Nazis. 

Spycatcher.  In 1985, Peter Wright, a former British secret agent in MI5, wrote a tell-all memoir about his experiences with the agency.  At the time, Wright was terribly embittered by the agency, having lost an appeal to have his pension payments increased.  The United Kingdom immediately banned the book, but Wright was successful in having the work published in Australia despite British attempts to suppress the book there as well.  In 1988, the Law Lords allowed Spycatcher to be published in the United Kingdom ruling that the classified materials it contained had already been compromised when the book was published in Australia.

Little Black Sambo.  The children's tale, Little Black Sambo, is often portrayed as an inherently racist attack on African-
Americans.  Actually, it was written in 1899 by Helen Bannerman, an Scotswoman living in India and has absolutely nothing to do with Africans or Americans.  The book was incredibly popular world-wide for many years but fell into disfavor and began to disappear from store shelves in the United States with the rise of political correctness.  Although it was frequently challenged and often removed from libraries on a local basis, it was never legally banned in the United States.  That said, in 1988, the Washington Post newspaper began a campaign to have the book banned in Japan, where it's popularity had never waned.  The Post criticism of Japan spawned a massive letter writing campaign by an organization, The Association to Stop Racism--which turned out actually be only a few people--and ignited protests at the Japanese Embassy and political threats to boycott Japanese cultural exports.  The campaign was successful and all copies of Little Black Sambo were withdrawn from sale in Japan in 1988.  The title did not reappear for sale in Japan until 2005.

The Satanic Verses.  Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, a fictionalized account of the life of Muhammad in 1988 to critical acclaim throughout the world, except in Muslim nations where parts of the text were branded by many as blasphemous.  Not only was the book banned, but in 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa announcing, "I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its contents are sentenced to death."  Subsequently, Muslims assassinated the Japanese translator of the book, seriously injured the Italian translator of the book, and almost killed the Norwegian publisher of the book.  Salman Rusdie remains in hiding, and when he appears in person, it is only with extensive personal security.  In 2006, Iran announced the fatwa will remain in place permanently.
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