Books banned in the United States
In the United States, the First Amendment limits what governments can ban, so most American bans came through obscenity law: prosecutors, the Post Office under the 1873 Comstock Act, and US Customs, which seized books at the border. Many of these cases ended with courts clearing the book, from Ulysses in 1933 to Tropic of Cancer in 1964 and Fanny Hill in 1966. This page also includes books censored or withdrawn by their own US publishers and a 1990 court order against a book about the Mossad.
By Way of Deception
A former Mossad case officer's account of the agency's training and operations. Israel won a temporary court order against its US publication in 1990; the order was lifted and the book became a bestseller.
Why it was banned: Israel obtained a temporary court order against its US publication in 1990; the order was lifted on appeal within days.
Fahrenheit 451
A novel about a fireman whose job is burning books, in a society that has outlawed them.
Why it was banned: From 1967 its own publisher sold an expurgated edition for schools that cut words and passages, without Bradbury's knowledge; when he found out years later, the full text was restored.
Fanny Hill
An erotic novel of a young woman's life in eighteenth-century London, first published as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.
Why it was banned: Cleland was arrested soon after publication; the book was prosecuted for obscenity in the US from 1821, and the US Supreme Court cleared it in 1966 (Memoirs v. Massachusetts).
Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President
An unauthorised biography of George W. Bush. St. Martin's Press recalled and destroyed its print run in 1999; Soft Skull Press reissued it in 2000. The author died in 2001.
Howl and Other Poems
Ginsberg's collection led by 'Howl', a defining work of the Beat Generation.
Why it was banned: US Customs seized copies in 1957 and San Francisco police arrested its publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights; a judge ruled the book not obscene later that year.
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lawrence's novel of an affair between an aristocratic woman and her husband's gamekeeper, written with explicit language unusual for its time.
Why it was banned: Not published unexpurgated in Britain until 1960, when Penguin Books was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act and acquitted; in the US, a 1959 court ruling cleared Grove Press's edition.
Leaves of Grass
Whitman's lifelong collection of poems celebrating the self, the body and democratic America.
Why it was banned: In 1882 the Boston district attorney threatened prosecution for obscenity, and the publisher, James R. Osgood, withdrew the edition.
Naked Lunch
Burroughs's fragmented novel of addiction and control, first published in Paris.
Why it was banned: Found obscene by a Boston court in 1965; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed the ruling in 1966.
The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck's novel of the Joad family, driven from Oklahoma by the Dust Bowl to look for work in California.
Why it was banned: Banned from schools and libraries in Kern County, California, by the county Board of Supervisors in 1939, and burned publicly in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Tropic of Cancer
Miller's autobiographical novel of his life as a struggling writer in Paris, where it was first published.
Why it was banned: Kept out of the US as obscene for nearly three decades; after Grove Press published it in 1961 it faced dozens of prosecutions, until the US Supreme Court ruled it not obscene in 1964 (Grove Press v. Gerstein).
Ulysses
Joyce's modernist novel following Leopold Bloom through a single day in Dublin, 16 June 1904.
Why it was banned: Excerpts were prosecuted for obscenity in New York in 1921, and US Customs seized copies until a federal judge ruled in 1933 that the book was not obscene (United States v. One Book Called Ulysses).