The blue pencil: Banned books

The censorship and outright banning of printed works has a long and (dis- ) honourable history. Governments, religious authorities and the plain interfering of all complexions and persuasions have, to varying degrees of success, put their minds to the vexing problem of how to stop seditious or obscene material from reaching the public.

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Until recently the Roman Catholic Church published an index of books dangerous to the faith or morals of Catholics, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

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Q. The what

A. Literally the Index of Forbidden Books, the first of these was published in 1559 by the Sacred Congregation of the Roman Inquisition. The last and 20th edition of the Index appeared in 1948, finally being suppressed in June 1966.

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Q. Which books have been banned for religious reasons

A. The Bible and the Koran were both removed from numerous libraries and banned from import in the Soviet Union between 1926 and 1956. Many editions of the Bible have also been banned and burned by civil and religious authorities throughout history. More recently, on 1 July 1996 the authorities in Singapore convicted a woman for possessing the Jehovah's Witness' translation of the Bible, and Burma apparently bans all Bible translations into local languages.

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Q. What about books banned for their sexual content

D H Lawrence

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Q. A quick r�sum�

A. In no way a writer of obscenity, Lawrence was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. His frank handling of sexuality cast him as a pioneer of liberation from the strict morality of the 19th century. What is remarkable in his work is the poetic vividness of his writing and his efforts to describe subjective states of emotion and sensation.

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Lady Chatterley's Lover was the object of numerous obscenity trials in both the UK and the USA. Privately published in 1928 the book led an underground life until legal decisions in New York (1959) and London (1960) made it freely available. In the novel Lawrence portrays tender sexual love, across barriers of class and marriage, and he describes sexual acts as expressing aspects or moods of love. His use of four-letter words did nothing to endear him to the authorities either.

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Q. Which other now classic books have received similar receptions

A. James Joyce's modernist masterpiece, Ulysses, had received wide praise from many literary scholars on its publication in Paris in 1922, yet it was barred from the USA as obscene for more than a decade. The lifting of the ban in 1933 came only after advocates fought for the right to publish the book in the courts.

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John Cleland's Fanny Hill (AKA Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) has been frequently suppressed since its first publication in 1749. This story of a prostitute is known both for its frank sexual descriptions and its parodies of contemporary literature, such as Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. The US Supreme Court finally cleared it from obscenity charges in 1966.

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Aristophanes' Lysistrata - written in 5th century BC Athens and banned in Greece in 1967 for its anti-war sentiments - Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - now on A-level syllabuses - Boccaccio's Decameron, Defoe's Moll Flanders and various editions of The Arabian Nights were all banned for decades by the US Mail under the Comstock Law of 1873. Officially known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, this law banned the mailing of 'lewd', 'indecent', 'filthy' or 'obscene' materials. These laws, while no longer enforced, remain for the most part on in place today. The Telecommunications Reform Bill of 1996 even specifically applied some of them to computer networks.

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Q. And political and philosophical censorship

A. Thomas Paine, best known for his writings supporting American independence, was indicted for treason in England in 1792 for his work The Rights of Man, in which he defended the French Revolution. More than one English publisher was also prosecuted for printing The Age of Reason, where Paine argues for Deism and against Christianity and Atheism

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Jack London's writing was censored in several European dictatorships in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 Italy banned the Call of the Wild, and Yugoslavia banned all his works as being 'too radical'. Some of London's works were also burned by the Nazis.

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South Africa's apartheid regime banned a number of classic books. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was banned there as 'indecent, objectionable, or obscene', and they also - if it wasn't so frightening it would be laughable - banned Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. Yes, the one about the horse.

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Q. In these 'enlightened' times, what kind of books are still barred from us

A. E for Ecstasy, a book on the drug MDMA, was seized by Australian customs in 1994. In the UK there has recently been a furore over the book The Gates of Janus: Serial Killing and Analysis by Moors Murderer Ian Brady. However, the government sensibly kept out of the argument and the US-published book, rightly or wrongly, will be available in the UK

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Q. Surely making a fuss about a book can send its sales through the roof

A. The Relax syndrome Of course it does. When, for example, the British Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher tried to ban former MI5-man Peter Wright's Spy Catcher, they increased its world-wide sales enormously, making huge profits for both publisher and author.

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Anyway, even if the authorities do manage to legally suppress a book, there is nothing to stop you getting hold of it from abroad, particularly with the advent of internet booksellers such as Amazon and alphabetstreet. Hardly seems worth the bother.

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See also the articles on Ian Brady, stream of consciousness and the Decameron

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For more on Arts & Literature click here

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By Simon Smith