By Les Phipps
Throughout history, there have always been books that have been banned for various reasons, whether this is political, racism, bigotry, sex, homophobia, religion, there are hundreds of reasons why even down to the cover, not the content. Books have been banned, some quite correctly and some for more dubious and sinister reasons of repression and censorship that should not have been. I’m sure we can all name books that should have been banned purely for offences to literature, where we read it and thought to ourselves, what on earth were the publishers thinking in putting this into print!
As this week marks National Banned Book Week, here in no particular order are our top 10 of Banned Books, please don’t judge us, this is just a lighter- hearted look at the world of banned books!
- Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
This is a book about censorship, set in a future where firemen are employed to burn books! We could not leave this out, what delicious double irony, a banned book about banning books and firemen making fires! Adding to this fest of irony, it was banned in an American school during Banned Books Week for its explicit language and questionable themes. It also happens to be a great read. - Lysistrata – Aristophanes
This book was banned in the US in 1873, and in Greece by the Nazis in 1942, and by the military junta in 1967. This book is an account of one woman’s mission to end The Peloponnesian War – she convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace. - Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – J K Rowling
The first of the hugely successful Harry Potter series, in which Harry discovers he’s a wizard and enrols in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was banned and burned in many US states for promoting witchcraft, and also banned in some Christian schools in the UK. - The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
If you have been living under a stone since 2003 you may have missed the sad fact that The Da Vinci Code is a world – a best seller. Apparently, the discovery that there was a possibility that Jesus Christ of Nazareth having been married to Mary Magdalene caused quite a stir. The book has been criticized for its historical and scientific inaccuracy. It has been denounced by many Christian denominations as an attack on the Roman Catholic Church, and Christian leaders in the Lebanon went so far as to ban the book. - Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
Black Beauty has sold fifty million copies worldwide and is one of the best-selling books of all time. Praising the virtues of kindness and respect, it was banned by the South African government during the Apartheid era because of the word ‘Black’ in the title. This sums up the sadness and horror of the Apartheid regime. - Areopagitica – John Milton
While not the most well known in modern times of Milton’s work, Areopagitica is among history’s most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression. No surprise, then, that Areopagitica was banned under the very act it protested against in the midst of the English Civil War. Could also have been banned for making generations of school children trying to pronounce it! - Revolting Rhymes – Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl’s parody of classic children’s fairy tales replaces the traditional ‘happy ever afters’ with something quite different and most joyously dark… most of the characters meet gruesome endings! Not surprisingly, it regularly features on the American Library Association’s list of banned and challenged books. - Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Banned from some US schools because Tarzan was ‘living in sin’ with Jane. Although the book is hugely successful, the novel spawned two dozen sequels, plus film and comic book adaptations, Tarzan is still very much a part of modern culture today. - Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence,
This makes it on to the list for the sheer amount of controversy it created Lady Chatterley’s Lover was banned in England and the United States after its initial publication in 1928. The unexpurgated edition did not appear in America until 1959, after one of the most spectacular legal battles in publishing history. - Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler
History has given Adolf Hitler many names for the obvious reasons, a madman, tyrant and animal. Mein Kampf (My Struggle), is often called the Nazi bible. We don’t really see how we could leave this off the list. Though in a slightly more serious note, there is a school of thought that would say that by banning Mein Kampf, it gives the book more status and notoriety than it deserves and could be construed as a form of censorship in itself. I will leave that one up to the scholars to debate.
You can now browse our store specifically for Banned Books here at World of Rare Books.