Literary Censorship Highlights (From Tabula Rasa #3, 1994)585 BCThe fabulist Æsop is flung from a high rock by the priests of Delphi, an execution for sacrilege.

443 BCThe office of Censor is created in the Roman Republic. The duty of the position was to collect statistics and patrol their accuracy. Meanwhile, in Athens, Plato is theorising the position of literature in The Republic. 'The poet shall compose nothing contrary to the ideas of the lawful, just, or beautiful or good, which are allowed in the State; nor shall he be permitted to show his compositions to any private individual, until he shall have shown them to the appointed censors and the guardians of the law, and they are satisfied with them.'

398 BCAnd at the height of the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes produces his satire Lysistrata, the parliament of women. The Athenian ruler Cleophon calls for his deportment as an alien for producing morally offensive material. The way Aristophanes satirised him may just have been a factor.

17 ADOne of the most popular poets of the new Roman Imperium, Publius Ovidius Naso or 'Ovid', is banished from Rome after publishing the Ars Amatoria (your Latin's good enough for that). This was conceivably an excuse; he writes that 'two crimes, a poem and a blunder have brought me to ruin. I must keep silent.'

1235The Inquisition is established by Pope Gregory IX to patrol and enforce the orthodoxy of the Christian faith. The Inquisition, over the next four hundred years, practises an extremely direct form of censorship involving the examination of published works, their judgement of heretical content or otherwise, and the seeking out and examination of the authors. If an idea did not fit in with established church law, it could not be circulated. Writers such as Giordono Bruno, in 1600, and Lucilio Vanini, 1619, were burned along with their works.

1554The first of a new style of novel, the 'picaresque', is published in Spain by an anonymous author. La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y sus Fortunas y Adversidades is placed on Pius IV's list of banned books, for immorality and anti-clerical statements.

1571Paul IV issues the first formal Index Librorum Prohibitorum, including such works as De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Copernicus and the Dialoga of Galileo.

1660In England A Proclamation for Calling In, and Suppressing of Two Books Written by John Milton. The books concerned are Milton's Eikonklastes (a justification of Charles I's execution) and Pro Populo Defensio (In Defence of the People of England).

1759The Encyclopedie ou Dictionnaire Raisonne Des Sciences, Des Arts et de Metiers, is placed on that year’s papal Index. The project of a group of French intellectuals, including Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Denis Diderot and Francois Arout le Voltaire, the entry most likely to have been the trouble was 'Cannibalism, see Eucharist'.

1785Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais has his extremely popular play La folle Journèe (The Crazy Day), banned for raising the issue of droit et signeur. Also known as Le Mariage de Figaro, the ban was lifted by the Duke of Vienna in 1786 to allow performance of an opera version by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

1796An English 'Society for the Suppression of Vice' is formed and succeeds in having The Monk banned. This was the second edition, wherein the author revealed himself as a well-regarded Member of Parliament, Matthew Lewis. The exalted position of the author appears to have been the motivation.

1801French government forces arrest the Marquis de Sade at the house of his publisher. Copies of the notorious Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu, published in 1791, are also seized. This book remained banned in France, certainly into the 1960s. The works of this author have, as a rule, been a mainstay of the debate on censorship since they were first published.

1818A member of that English Society for the Suppression of Vice was one Thomas Bowdler, who in this year published The Bowdler Family Shakespere, excised of all 'words and expressions... which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family'.

1873In America, the 'Comstock Act' is passed by Congress, criminalising the depositing of 'obscene, lewd or lascivious book or other publication of indecent character' in the US mail. The bill was lobbied for by Anthony Comstock, founder and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

1877Annie Besant stands trial in England for the printing and distribution of The Fruits of Philosophy, a pamphlet on birth control described as 'indecent, lewd and obscene'.

1917The periodical The Little Review begins publishing James Joyce's novel 'about the whole of life', Ulysses, in serial form. Charges of obscenity follow and stick. The Shakespere and Company bookshop in Paris nonetheless prints the first full edition in 1922; an edition not permitted to be imported into England or America.

1939World War II. Lots. It is interesting to note that, aside from the usual propaganda and cultural purity issues, works of fictional horror were dissaproved of on both sides of the Atlantic on the grounds they would damage morale.

1954The American Senate commences an inquiry, and brings to court Entertaining Comics, for producing titles such as Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. The trial was incited by publication of Dr Fredric Wertham's book, The Seduction of the Innocents: The Influence of Comic Books on Today's Youth.

1989Salmon Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses was deemed an insult to Islam and banned in Islamic counties, whilst copies were burnt in England. Not content with this, the Ayatollah Khomeini placed a death sentence on the author's head, forcing him into hiding. At least they didn't throw him off a rock. That's progress for you.Timeline of Literary Censorship in Canada

1694Molière’s comedy Tartuffe was condemned by Bishop Jean Baptiste de la Croix Chevrière de Saint-Vallier of Quebec. In his sentence the bishop declared that all such comedies were not only dangerous, but also evil and criminal. To ensure that inappropriate entertainments of this sort were not repeated in the colony, Chevrière offered the cash-strapped governor one hundred pistols in return for banning the offensive work, a gift that was happily accepted

1847

The passing of the Customs Act which prohibited the importation of “books and drawings of an immoral or indecent character.”

1895The creation of the first Canadian list of books not to be imported into Canada, including 47 titles; by 1957 there were over one thousand.

1914The passing of The War Measures Act provided for the “censorship and control and suppression of publications, writings, maps, plans, photographs, communication and means of communication.” Particularly severe was Chief Censor Ernest J. Chambers’ ban of 253 foreign titles, as well as the suppression of several Canadian newspapers including the Sault Ste. Marie Express, Le Bulletin of Montreal, Quebec City’s La Croix, and Victoria Week which had questioned the government’s wartime policies.

1919The extension of the War Measures Act ostensibly allowed for the reconstruction of the faltering Canadian economy. As a result numerous leftist books and journals were banned from importation. While some Canadian journals wthe Chief Censor was less successful in prosecuting organizations willing to print similar materials inside the country. In 1919, for example, the Socialist Party of Canada published an edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party using funds from the bequest of late party member George Whitehead of Vancouver.

1919In the wake of the Winnipeg Strike, Section 98 was added to the Criminal Code establishing a twenty year prison term for anyone involved in the production or distribution of printed materials that advocated or defended the use of force or terrorism to achieve political or economic change.

1923James Joyce’s Ulysses banned from importation into Canada. The ban was lifted in 1949.

1937 In Quebec, Maurice Duplessis’ government passed the “Padlock Law” making it illegal to propagate Communism in print.

1937 The Alberta government passed the “Alberta Press Act” requiring newspapers to publish free of charge statements furnished by the Social Credit Board chairman that related to government policies. Editors had to print up to one full page of text every day a newspaper was printed if needed by the Party. The Act also demanded that newspapers divulge the names of anyone involved in the writing of editorials. Penalties included suspension of publication and bans against journalists.

1939Passing of The War Measures Act and the Defence of Canada Regulations which came into effect in September 1939. As with World War I, censorship focused on the protection of military secrets, national safety, the prosecution of the war abroad, and the maintenance of morale at home. Contrary to common law tradition, the burden of proof fell on the person who was charged with any violation of the regulations.

1949Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead banned in Canada.

1954The federal government defined “obscenity” in the Criminal Code, amending the definition five years later to state that “any publication a dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence, shall be deemed to be obscene.”

1960The uncensored version of Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover banned from Canada. The ban was lifted in 1962.

1970Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to deal with the perceived threat that the F.L.Q. posed to peace in Canada generally and Quebec in particular. The Act limited the ability of newspapers and magazines to report events with surprisingly little criticism at the time although the Act allowed for the “censorship and the control and suppression of publications, writings, maps, plans, photographs, communications and means of communication.”

1971Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women is removed from the shelves of a Peterborough High School leading to the establishment of Freedom to Read Week in Canada.

1976A group of Lakefield, Ontario parents united under the banner of the “Citizens in Defence of Decency”, demanding that Laurence’s The Diviners be removed from schools on the grounds that it was “unsavory pornography” promoting “degradation, indecency and immorality”. Although their demands were ultimately rejected, another challenge came in 1985 by another group who acknowledged that they had not read the book in its entirety.

1982With the appearance of the Canadian Charter of Rights limitations on literary expression become far more difficult, though not impossible, to justify.

1989During Freedom to Read Week Canada becomes the only Western Deomcracy to ban the importation and sale of The Satanic Verses.

2000J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is removed from numerous school libraries across Canada, particularly in Newfoundland, Ontario, and Alberta.

2007Peel's Catholic board pulled the award-winning novel Snow Falling on Cedars from high school library shelves after one parent complained about its sexual content.