Introduction
Throughout history, books have typically been banned for one of three primary reasons:
sedition, heresy, and obscenity. The first two reasons are far more common than the third
in most societies, but the United States is somewhat unique in that the First Amendment
to the Constitution has always protected speech that some consider heretical. Although
the U.S. Congress passed laws banning seditious speech in 1798 and 1918, these laws
were short-lived, and no major book bannings occurred as a result. However, many
books have been legally banned in the U.S. for obscenity, the definition of which has
been the subject of great debate in the judicial system for more than a century.
The sale of obscene material was banned in most U.S. states from the early 1800s, but the
first national law prohibiting the distribution of such materials was the Comstock Act of
1873. At the time it was enacted, the Comstock Act applied to many kinds of materials,
including contraceptive devices, but one of its primary effects was to stop the sale of
“obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious” books. The federal Comstock Act applied only to the
distribution of prohibited material through the mail, but this was the primary vehicle for
the sale of books from publishers to wholesalers to bookstores. Additionally, many states
adopted laws modeled on the Comstock Act to ban the sale of such materials within their
borders. The Tariff Act of 1930 added another federal mechanism for banning obscene
material, giving the U.S. Customs Department the authority to seize and destroy such
works upon importation.
The courts have adopted various standards over the years for determining whether
published material is obscene. The Hicklin test was used in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. This rule was borrowed from the outcome of the British case, Queen
v. Hicklin, which determined that obscenity is defined as the tendency “to deprave and
corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a
publication… may fall.” In the 1930s, the Hicklin test was modified by what is known as
the “book as a whole” test, which makes allowances for literary merit and asks whether a
work’s overall effect is pornographic in nature.
In 1957, the Supreme Court set the obscenity bar higher, in the decision for Roth v.
United States. The Roth test was “whether to the average person, applying contemporary
community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to
prurient interest.” The Roth Opinion also states that obscenity is “utterly without
redeeming social importance.” The Roth test was upheld in Miller v. California in 1973,
but the Supreme Court Opinion added that the work must depict or describe “in a patently
offensive way, sexual conduct,” and must “as a whole, [lack] serious literary, artistic,
political, or scientific value.” The Miller test is still used by the U.S. judicial system.
At the center of these court decisions, the merits of some of the greatest and most popular
novels have been debated. As literary authors have continued to push the boundaries of
what is deemed acceptable, community standards have changed, making the banning of
books under the terms of the Comstock Act nearly impossible today.
Ulysses
Ulysses is now considered to be one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century and a
paragon of the Modernist style, but its initial publication in the United States was fraught
with controversy. The novel was originally published serially in the literary magazine
The Little Review between 1918 and 1920. Groups of concerned citizens objected to the
explicit sexual content of certain episodes in the text, and the courts determined that
Ulysses was obscene and could therefore be banned under the terms of the Comstock Act.
When the novel was published in its entirety in 1922 by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare
Head Press in Paris, its importation into the United States was blocked, and 500 copies of
the novel were destroyed by the U.S. Department of the Post Office.
In 1930, the U.S. Customs Department declared that Ulysses was obscene and its
importation could be banned under the Tariff Act of 1930. The publisher Random House
took that opportunity to request a court hearing, which was required by tariff law. In the
resulting case, United States v. One Book Entitled “Ulysses,” Random House argued that
the explicit language and imagery must be viewed in the context of the book as a whole.
Judge John M. Woolsey of the Federal Court of New York agreed, stating that the book
was not pornographic in its overall effect. His decision was later upheld in the circuit
court of appeals. The decision in the Ulysses trial set precedence for the obscenity
standard to apply to entire works, rather than selected passages.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
When D.H. Lawrence published Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928, he expected that the
book would be widely banned for sexual content and profanity, and thus elected to have
1,000 copies of the book printed privately in Italy. The novel caused a sensation among
readers, and high demand led to the creation of dozens of pirated editions in the following
years. Because of the unusual method of publication, Lawrence did not hold an
international copyright for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, so he had little recourse for the fact
that he received no money from the sale of the pirated books. The United States declared
the book to be obscene in 1929, and many copies were seized in the mail or at Customs.
Booksellers who attempted to offer copies of the novel were actively prosecuted
throughout the country.
In 1959, Grove Press challenged the ban by publishing an unexpurgated edition of the
novel with the intent to distribute it in the United States. The Grove edition was
immediately banned by Postmaster General Christenberry, which resulted in the trial
Grove Press v. Christenberry. The ban on the novel was lifted in federal district court;
Judge Frederick van Pelt Bryan argued that community standards of the time allowed for
broader freedom of expression in dealing with issues of sexuality. The decision was
upheld on appeal, but copies of the novel continued to be suppressed in the mail and in
individual communities for many years.
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer was originally published in Paris in 1934 by Obelisk Press, and was
banned in the United States until Lady Chatterley’s Lover was determined not to be
obscene. At that time, the Post Office and Customs lifted their bans, assuming that
Tropic of Cancer would also be deemed acceptable in terms of community standards.
Grove Press quickly brought out an American paperback edition of Tropic of Cancer in
1961. The appearance of a paperback edition of a book on which the ban had only
recently been lifted caused an uproar in many communities. Because paperback editions
are cheaper, they circulate more broadly, which caused concern that the corrupting
influence of the novel might become more pervasive. Police in Chicago and other cities
confiscated the books or attempted to intimidate booksellers to convince them to stop
selling the novel. The result of these local actions was to force Grove Press to defend
Tropic of Cancer in numerous lower courts, where no national determination of the
book’s status as obscene or not could be made.
Tropic of Cancer was defended for its literary merit by many leading scholars in the
lower courts. Opponents of the book argued that the opinions of intellectuals did not
consist of a “community standard,” and that the average person would react to the novel
as pornography. However, one of the cases, Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, eventually
came before the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared that the book was not obscene
using the Roth standard.
Fanny Hill
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, or Fanny Hill, was written by John Cleland in 1748. It
was banned in England in 1749, and Cleland was forced to renounce the novel.
However, the book was very popular, and pirated editions were almost continuously
produced and circulated. G. P. Putnam’s Sons published the first official American
edition in 1963. It was immediately banned for obscenity. Fanny Hill is an erotic novel
that has an overall effect of appealing to prurient interest. It is a popular work that is not
seen as having the same literary merit as Ulysses and Tropic of Cancer. Therefore, it was
not clear that it would fail the Roth test for obscenity. However, Putnam, a large and
well-respected popular publisher, challenged the ban in court.
In Memoirs v. Massachusetts, Putnam’s lawyers argued that while the novel does “appeal
to prurient interest,” its enduring popularity upheld its social value, as determined by
community standards. In 1966, the Supreme Court repealed the ban on Fanny Hill. After
that decision, it became exceedingly difficult for literary works to be banned as obscene.
The Catcher in the Rye
Although The Catcher in the Rye has never been legally banned by a United States
federal government agency, it has been the source numerous challenges in schools,
libraries, and communities throughout the country. The reason for controversy is the
novel’s common position as required or suggested reading for high school students.
Since its publication in 1951, many concerned parents and allied organizations have
objected to the novel’s moral ambiguity and profanity. However, schools, libraries, and
teachers have staunchly defended the book as a well-written and thought-provoking
novel, appropriate for literary education at the high school level.
The continuing controversy surrounding The Catcher in the Rye exemplifies the typical
methods by which books are currently suppressed in the United States. Rather than
challenging the book for obscenity in federal courts, those who would have the book
banned have done so at the local level, bringing their objections to school boards and
library directors. This is an effective method, as school boards do not have to apply
precedented obscenity tests to the materials they ban, nor are their decisions usually
subject to judicial review. The Catcher in the Rye has consistently been one of the most
frequently banned books in U.S. schools. In 1960, a high school English teacher in
Tulsa, Oklahoma was fired for assigning the book to students, but was later reinstated
after appeal. However, the ban on The Catcher in the Rye in the school continued. Such
compromises are a common response to challenged books. While a school district may
allow their libraries to retain copies of a challenged book, they will have it removed from
all required reading lists. Another common compromise is to require parental permission
for students to read a commonly challenged book.