DONT STRESS YOURSELF, TEN BANNED BOOKS AND REASONS WHY THEY WERE BANNED

1  Ulysses. James Joyce (Irish, 1882-1941)
Instalments of Ulysses appeared in the US magazine The Little Review in 1918 and a trial of the book based on one chapter from the magazine took place in 1921.The book was published in Paris in 1922. US Customs refused to handle it on the grounds of obscenity and the work was burned in the USA, Canada, England and Ireland. Ulysses was eventually published in the USA in 1933 and in the UK in 1936.

2 The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights.
These stories have been frequently banned in Arab countries, most recently Egypt in 1989 who declared they posed a threat to the nation’s moral fabric. The Arabian Nights was having problems in the USA back in the 1920s. It could not be handled by the US mail because of the Comstock Law of 1873, which prohibited the distribution of publications considered obscene.

3 Tropic of Cancer. Henry Miller (American, 1891-1980)
Tropic of Cancer was first published in Paris in 1934 and was banned in both the USA and the UK because of its explicit sexual nature. When the US ban was eventually lifted in 1961 an obscenity trial followed publication and only in 1964 did the US Supreme Court find in the book’s favour. It is now considered a classic.
The Dark. John McGahern (Irish, 1934-2008)

4 The Dark, McGahern’s second novel, concerns clerical child abuse and was banned by the Irish board of censorship for its alleged pornographic content and implications of sexual abuse. He was told to resign his teaching post and, when he defied the instruction, was dismissed on the instruction of the Archbishop of Dublin.

5 The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie (Indian, 1947- )
The Satanic Verses has been banned in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Qatar, Indonesia, South Africa and India for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed and insulting Islam. In 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslim’s to kill the author; as a result Rushdie had to go into hiding.

6 Madame Bovary. Gustave Flaubert (French, 1821-1880)
The publication of Madame Bovary resulted, in 1857, in Flaubert being taken to court in Paris for offending public morality. Even though he was acquitted, the book remained controversial. In 1864 it was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum by the Vatican, the English publisher, Vizitelly, was imprisoned in 1889 for publishing ‘obscene libels’ and as late as 1954 it was blacklisted in the USA by the National Organisation of Decent Literature.

7 Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad (Polish, 1867-1924)
In the past Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, was proscribed in Poland, Germany and the USSR for reasons of political censorship. More recently it has been banned in parts of the USA for its use of the word ‘nigger’. Interestingly, in 1975 Chinua Achebe, whose own book is banned, branded Conrad ‘a bloody racist’ for this book.

8 Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe (Nigerian, 1830- )
Achebe’s work was banned in Western Nigeria when, in 1988, the author suggested that the veteran politician Obafeni Awolowo didn’t deserve a state funeral. Although Things Fall Apart has been translated into more than 50 languages, has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and is included on Time magazine’s 2005 list of 100 best novels, its sale has recently been ‘restricted’ in Malaysia.

9 The Origin of Species. Charles Darwin (English, 1809-1882)
The publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 unleashed one of the most dramatic controversies of the Victorian era. Darwin was accused of ‘dethroning God’ and clergy railed against him from pulpits all over Britain. The work was promptly banned from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge even though he was a graduate. In 1925 the State of Tennessee banned the teaching of evolutionary theory, the law remaining in force till 1967. The book was also banned in Yugoslavia in 1935 and Greece in 1937.

10 Peyton Place. Grace Metalious (American, 1924-1964)
Peyton Place was publishing’s first ‘blockbuster’, and though it was denounced by the Church and dismissed by most critics as ‘trash, it sold 3 million copies in 1957 and more than 10 million by 1967. Peyton Place was banned in Ireland in 1958 for being ‘obscene’ and ‘indecent’; it was also banned in several US cities; declared ‘indecent’ in Canada and a ‘complete debasement of taste’ in New Hampshire, where it is set.