Q 01/05

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

A) Scribner's

B) Random House

C) Alfred A. Knopf

D) Viking Press

Answer · why

B) Random House

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.

Q 02/05

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

A) The Smart Set

B) The Seven Arts

C) The Little Review

D) The Criterion

Answer · why

C) The Little Review

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.

Q 03/05

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

A) The Well of Loneliness

B) Last Exit to Brooklyn

C) Lady Chatterley's Lover

D) The Naked and the Dead

Answer · why

C) Lady Chatterley's Lover

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

Q 04/05

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

A) Gerald Gardiner

B) Laurence Byrne

C) Mervyn Griffith-Jones

D) Roy Jenkins

Answer · why

C) Mervyn Griffith-Jones

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

Q 05/05

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

A) Midnight's Children

B) Shame

C) The Satanic Verses

D) The Moor's Last Sigh

Answer · why

C) The Satanic Verses

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...