Banned Books

Introduction

James Joyce's Ulysses was banned for many years

And so was Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn!

The reason that any book is banned is because something in its content runs counter to what is often majority opinion. Books have been banned for being too sexually explicit or having offensive language. Sometimes books’ subjects run counter to prevalent religious thought, but other books are banned for actually promoting a particular religion. Some people charge that racism should be grounds for banning a particular work; others decry promotion of counter-majority lifestyles, such as homosexuality. Concerns about graphic violence can also put a book on the endangered reading list (R. L. Stein’s and Stephen King’s work, for example). Some of the most famous examples of banned books include Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

Essential Facts

Every country in the world has banned books. In England, D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the object of numerous obscenity trials. In Italy and Yugoslavia, Jack London’s Call of the Wild was banned in 1929 for being “too radical.”
Before a book can be banned, it must be challenged. Between 1990 and 2006, the Office of Intellectual Freedom reported that 6,346 books were considered for banishment.
Radical actions have sometimes been taken against books. For example, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was considered vulgar, immoral, and even “bestial.” In East St. Louis, the board of trustees ordered all three of the library’s copies to be burned.
Judy Blume, writer of preteen and teen fiction, is one of the most frequently banned of authors. She laments, “(I)t’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.”
Banned Book Week runs every year from September 29 to Oct 1.