38 Fun Facts About Banned Book

Which publisher arranged the seizure of Ulysses that led to the 1933 US ruling clearing it of obscenity?

Random House's Bennett Cerf had a copy seized by US customs to force a test case, and Judge John Woolsey then ruled the novel not obscene.

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

The Little Review's serialization ended after a New York court ruled the novel obscene in 1921, a year before the full book came out.

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

Lady Chatterley's Lover was acquitted, and the trial came to symbolize the permissive new values of the 1960s.

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.

Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's death over which novel?

The Satanic Verses brought Rushdie more than 30 years of death threats, and in 2022 he suffered life-changing injuries in a stabbing in New York state.

Which English city's protesters publicly burned a copy of Salman Rushdie's novel in January 1989?

Bradford's protesters burned the novel because some Muslims considered it blasphemous.

Which poet was arrested in 1957 for publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl?

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was acquitted when Judge Clayton Horn ruled that Howl was not obscene.

Which organization led attacks on The Grapes of Wrath in California in 1939?

The Associated Farmers opposed its portrait of California growers, yet the novel became an immediate best-seller across the country.

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

North Dakota's Drake school board burned 32 copies in the school furnace, and Kurt Vonnegut wrote to chairman Charles McCarthy that he had been insulted.

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?

Central Park Zoo keepers gave the male penguins Roy and Silo an egg to hatch, and the chick they raised, Tango, gave the book its title.

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.

In 1981, which novel was both the most censored and the second most taught book in US public schools?

The Catcher in the Rye drew challenges mainly over its profane and vulgar language, along with its sexual references.

Lolita was first published in Paris in 1955 by which publishing house?

Olympia Press put out the first edition, and after British customs began seizing copies, the French government banned the novel too, in 1956.

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

Bradbury wrote it amid the Second Red Scare, but he later insisted the novel was really about television killing interest in literature.

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

Italy's Giangiacomo Feltrinelli published it first, and the CIA later had copies printed in Russian and handed to Soviet tourists at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

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

Lebanon banned it after Catholic leaders objected to its portrayal of Christ marrying Mary Magdalene and fathering a child.

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

Animal Farm was banned along with 125 other books for clashing with Islamic and Arab values, its leader being a talking pig.

Which spy memoir did the British government fight to suppress from 1985 until 1988?

Spycatcher came out in Australia in 1987 after Britain lost its court case there, and the government's fight to stop it in the UK failed the next year.

Which newspaper editor led the 1928 campaign to suppress The Well of Loneliness?

James Douglas of the Sunday Express called for the novel's suppression, and Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks then started legal proceedings.

Which erotic novel did the US Supreme Court finally clear of obscenity?

John Cleland's Fanny Hill had been ruled obscene by Massachusetts's highest court before the Supreme Court overturned that in Memoirs v. Massachusetts.

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

Madame Bovary's trial ended with Flaubert cleared, and the scandal helped make the novel a bestseller when it appeared in two volumes that April.

In 1964 the US Supreme Court declared which Henry Miller novel not obscene?

Tropic of Cancer was cleared in Grove Press v. Gerstein, which overturned a Florida ban on the book.

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

Opernplatz is where Joseph Goebbels told the crowd that the age of excessive Jewish intellectualism was over as the books burned.

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.

Which children's book did Alabama segregationists attack in 1959 for promoting racial integration?

The Rabbits' Wedding showed a white rabbit marrying a black one; Alabama's state library chief answered the attacks by moving it to reserve shelves, where librarians could still request it.

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

The Comstock Act was enforced by Anthony Comstock himself as a special Post Office agent, and he used it to make arrests.

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

Island Trees v. Pico began when a Long Island school board pulled books it called anti-American, anti-Christian and just plain filthy, and students sued.

Which library activist helped found Banned Books Week in 1982?

Judith Krug helped launch it amid a sudden surge in challenges to books in libraries, bookstores and schools.

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

Gender Queer drew challenges over its LGBTQIA+ content and over claims that it was sexually explicit.

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

Texas topped the 2022 count as Houston-area schools began pulling books from shelves for review, part of a statewide surge in bans.

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

The Diary of a Young Girl's Definitive Edition adds passages left out of the original, which a parent complained were sexually explicit.

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 children's book series topped the ALA's list of most challenged books in both 2012 and 2013?

Captain Underpants was challenged for offensive language and for being unsuited to its age group, among other complaints.

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

Burbank Unified dropped five classics from required reading after complaints about racism, though the books stayed in classroom libraries.

A 2003 court overturned an Arkansas district's permission rule for which book series?

Harry Potter books went back into general circulation after a fourth-grader's parents sued the Cedarville School District.

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

Fun Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets were pulled while the library wrote a selection policy, and both went back on the shelves in 2007.

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.