This month and next all over Seattle (and all over the country), libraries will be putting up displays and posters and hosting events in honor of Banned Books Week (Sept 27 – Oct 4). The annual event, started in 1982 by the American Library Association, is a celebration of your freedom to read, and an important reminder that this liberty must not be taken for granted. Of course banning books is nothing new, so to get things rolling this year, here’s a brief look back at 2,500 years of censorship. (Dates are of censorship, not publication).
- 585 B.C: Fables, by Aesop,
Legend has it that the Greek slave and storyteller was flung from the cliffs at Delphi for sacrilege. - 387 B.C.: The Odyssey, by Homer
Plato suggested that state censors should expurgate the outlandish adventures of Odysseus, and all other poetry. - 213 B.C.: The Analects, by Confucius
When Confucian books and scholars were burned by Qin dynasty officials, a single copy of the sage’s works was saved in the state library. - 8 A.D.: The Art of Love, by Ovid
Upon publication of this sly love manual, Ovid was banished from Rome. U.S. customs banned this work in 1928. - 1744: The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Goethe
This story of a doomed lover was suppressed across Europe after a supposed rash of copycat suicides. - 1749: Fanny Hill, by John Cleland (1749)
This infamous erotic tell-all was outlawed in the U.S. until 1966. - 1792: The Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine
The firebrand author of this radical tract fled arrest by the royalist English only to be imprisoned by French democrats. - 1810: King Lear, by William Shakespeare
Banned from the English stage for ten years, in deference to the insanity of King George III. - 1840: Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
Sales of this story of a dissatisfied woman skyrocketed when its author was charged with indecency. - 1859: On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
Fearing the outraged response to his epoch-making theory, Darwin kept the work in a desk drawer for 15 years before publishing it amidst a firestorm of controversy. - 1859: Adam Bede, by George Eliot
Condemned as the “vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind” and withdrawn from British libraries. - 1882: Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
When this great American poem was banned in Boston for explicit content, Whitman bought a house with proceeds from the increased sales. - 1885: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Banned in the Concord Massachusetts as “trash suitable only for the slums,” this classic coming-of-age story has been frequently challenged in the 20th century for racism. - 1920: Ulysses, by James Joyce
500 copies of this modern masterpiece were burned by the U.S. Post Office. - 1926: The Holy Qur’ran and The Holy Bible
For decades, both of these widely-revered scriptures were banned from import and removed from many libraries across the Soviet Union.
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