49 Fun Facts About Banned Book

Which 1933 US court ruling by Judge John Woolsey cleared James Joyce's most famous novel of obscenity?

The Second Circuit affirmed 2-1 that offensive language in serious literature is not obscene unless it promotes lust; the UK ban lasted until 1936.

Ulysses drew a New York obscenity prosecution while being serialised in which magazine?

Because the magazine could be bought in a New York bookshop, the district attorney was able to prosecute its sellers.

Penguin Books was prosecuted at the Old Bailey in 1960 for publishing which novel?

The jury acquitted after a six-day trial under the Obscene Publications Act 1959, a result often called the start of Britain's permissive society.

Who prosecuted the Lady Chatterley trial, asking jurors if they'd let their wife or servants read it?

Gerald Gardiner defended and Laurence Byrne presided; Roy Jenkins had written to The Spectator calling the prosecution a misapplication of the law.

Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie on which date?

A month earlier, protesters in Bradford, England, had publicly burned copies of The Satanic Verses.

Which English city publicly burned The Satanic Verses in January 1989?

Journalist Robert Winder said the images evoked medieval, not to mention Nazi, intolerance.

Which poet-publisher of City Lights Books was arrested in 1957 for selling Allen Ginsberg's Howl?

Store manager Shigeyoshi Murao was arrested too; Judge Clayton Horn ruled the poem not obscene on October 3, 1957.

Which organisation led the most fervent attacks on The Grapes of Wrath over its portrayal of the state's growers?

The novel was publicly banned and burned by citizens, yet was the best-selling book of 1939 and won the Pulitzer.

In 1973 a school board in which state burned every copy of Slaughterhouse-Five in its furnace?

Board head Charles McCarthy called the novel obscene; Kurt Vonnegut wrote him a letter defending his character and his work.

Which Pulitzer-winning graphic novel did a McMinn County, Tennessee, school board remove in 2022?

The vote cited profanity, violence and nudity; Art Spiegelman's book promptly shot to No. 1 on Amazon.

And Tango Makes Three is based on two real male penguins at which zoo?

Roy and Silo hatched an egg given to them by keepers; the authors found the story in a New York Times article.

Which institution's committee excluded Huckleberry Finn in 1885, calling it 'the veriest trash'?

The trustees found it 'more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people'; the ALA still listed it fifth most banned in 2007.

Between 1961 and 1982, which novel was the most censored book in US high schools and libraries?

In 1981 it was simultaneously the most censored and the second most taught book in American public schools.

Issaquah, Washington, school board members briefly banned The Catcher in the Rye in 1978 as part of what?

A Tulsa teacher had been fired in 1960 just for assigning the book.

Rejected by US and British publishers, Lolita was first published in 1955 in Paris by which house?

Maurice Girodias's list was three-quarters pornography, and France banned the book from 1955 to 1958.

Which critic named Lolita one of the three best books of 1955 in the Sunday Times, helping launch its reputation?

The book had come out as a pair of green paperbacks 'swarming with typographical errors'.

Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 during which period of American history?

He drew on the Nazi book burnings and Soviet repression; an editor at Ballantine urged him to expand his novella The Fireman.

Doctor Zhivago was smuggled out of the USSR and first published in 1957 in which country?

Publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli arranged it; Pasternak's Nobel Prize the next year enraged the Soviet Communist Party.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was banned in the Soviet Union in 1950 for what reason?

The USSR only legalised it in 1990, after editing; Vietnam still refuses it publication certification.

Which children's classic was banned in Hunan in 1931 for showing animals acting like humans?

The KMT government objected to anthropomorphised animals acting with human complexity.

Which 1818 novel was banned in apartheid South Africa in 1955 for 'obscene' or 'indecent' material?

Mary Shelley's novel joined a long list of works suppressed under apartheid-era censorship.

Which country banned The Da Vinci Code in September 2004 after Catholic leaders deemed it offensive?

The same country has banned Sophie's Choice and Schindler's Ark for their positive depiction of Jews.

Which Orwell novella was banned in the schools of the United Arab Emirates in 2002?

Vietnam also bans its translations for 'promoting false socialism ideology'.

Which anti-slavery novel was banned in the Confederate States during the Civil War?

It sold 300,000 copies in its first year and was the second best-selling book of the 19th century in America, after the Bible.

Which 1985 memoir by a former MI5 officer was banned in the UK until 1988 for revealing secrets?

Peter Wright's book could not be sold in Britain even as it was freely available in Australia and elsewhere.

Which editor said he would rather hand a child prussic acid than The Well of Loneliness?

A British court judged it obscene, and it was not published again in England until 1949.

John Cleland was arrested in 1749 for 'corrupting the King's subjects' with which erotic novel?

Also known as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, it was banned in the US in 1821 and again in 1963 before the Supreme Court cleared it.

Gustave Flaubert was prosecuted for obscenity in January 1857 over which novel?

He was acquitted on 7 February 1857 and the book became a bestseller when published in two volumes that April.

In which year did the US Supreme Court declare Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer non-obscene?

Grove Press's 1961 US edition triggered a wave of obscenity trials.

The Nazi book burnings of 10 May 1933 in Berlin took place at which square?

Now called Bebelplatz, it holds Micha Ullman's memorial The Empty Library; the first books burned came from Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute of Sexual Research.

Which organisation actually carried out the 1933 Nazi book burnings?

Its 'Action against the Un-German Spirit' targeted authors from Marx and Heine to Helen Keller, Hemingway and Jack London.

In which year was the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum formally abolished?

Its last printed edition appeared in 1948; Kepler's Epitome sat on the list from 1621 to 1835.

Which 1873 US law, named for an anti-vice crusader, made mailing 'obscene' literature a federal crime?

Its standard held until Roth v. United States in 1957; Boston's Watch and Ward Society made 'Banned in Boston' a selling point.

Which 1982 Supreme Court case, a Brennan plurality, addressed removing library books?

Brennan drew a line between curriculum, where boards have discretion, and the library, which he saw as a distinct First Amendment space.

Banned Books Week was founded in 1982 by which library activist?

It is held in the last full week of September, and since 2011 the Wednesday has doubled as Banned Websites Awareness Day.

Which graphic memoir was the American Library Association's most challenged book in 2021, 2022 and 2023?

Maia Kobabe's book, first printed in a run of 5,000, holds the Guinness World Record for most banned book of the year.

Which state issued the most book title challenges in 2022, per the ALA?

PEN America's 2022 report 'Banned in the USA' documented the surge; reported cases rose 63% between 2022 and 2023.

In 2010 Culpeper County schools in Virginia banned the 'Definitive Edition' of which famous journal?

That edition restored passages Otto Frank had cut, including Anne's reflections on her own body.

Which 1929 Hemingway novel was banned in Boston as 'salacious'?

Boston's Watch and Ward Society had made the city a censorship hub since Simon Called Peter in 1922.

Which country banned Brave New World in 1932, allegedly over references to sexual promiscuity?

Australia banned it too, from 1932 to 1937, and Ireland went on to ban Borstal Boy and works by Seán O'Casey and Frank O'Connor.

Which novel is restricted to over-18s across Australia, with sale banned outright in Queensland?

Australia has also banned The Anarchist Cookbook since 1985 under its National Classification Code.

Which Dav Pilkey series has been among the most challenged books in US schools since 1997?

Educators remain divided over its toilet humour and irreverence.

Which Sesame Street book was banned in a Middle Eastern country in 2017 for promoting Hanukkah?

It joined a national list that also includes Schindler's Ark and The Da Vinci Code.

According to PEN America, where is book restriction most pervasive in the United States?

PEN found 84 percent of prison mailrooms use an 'approved-vendor' rule, blocking books unless they arrive direct from a publisher or approved seller.

Which California district dropped To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men from required reading in 2020?

Huckleberry Finn, The Cay and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry were removed at the same time after parents raised concerns over racism.

In which Florida county was Nineteen Eighty-Four challenged in 1981 as 'pro-communist'?

The complaint also cited 'explicit sexual matter', an unusual charge against Orwell's dystopia.

Which school district barred students from borrowing Harry Potter without parental permission?

A 2007 challenge in Lawrenceville, Georgia, targeted the series in classrooms; Roald Dahl's The Witches drew similar complaints.

In 2006 a resident of Marshall, Missouri tried to remove which graphic memoir from the public library?

Alison Bechdel's book about her father later became a Tony-winning musical.

In 2024, The Perks of Being a Wallflower tied with which Toni Morrison novel as the third most challenged US book?

Stephen Chbosky's novel about a shy freshman named Charlie has been a challenge-list fixture for two decades.