Vittorio Matteo Corcos, Dreams, 1896. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna
In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Lord Henry refutes Dorian’s claim that the infamous ‘yellow book’ he read in his youth was responsible for the onset of his moral dissolution, on the grounds that books can be inherently neither moral not immoral. ‘The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame’ says Henry.
This year’s Banned Books Week has brought the focus to the censorship of diverse reading materials, particularly of recent publications intended for children or young adults. The attempt to suppress books deemed to be inappropriate for one reason or another is, of course, by no means a recent phenomenon.
To mark Banned Books Week, we’ve delved into the shady (and sometimes not so shady) corners of our collection and dusted off some of history’s controversial printed works. While graphic content remains the favourite and most prevalent reasons for some books being classified as thoroughly objectionable, other, more obscure justifications have sometimes been cited for the suppression of a title.
Possibly some of the most innocent-seeming and beloved works of children’s fiction, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny were banned in London schools in 1985 by the Inner London Education Authority for their portrayal of exclusively ‘middle-class rabbits’.
George Orwell. Animal Farm. A Fairy Story. 1995. Illustration by Ralph Steadman, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first edition of Animal Farm
Dwelling for a moment longer on the theme of anthropomorphised animals, these three novels were all, at some point, deemed exceptionable for their treatment of non-human characters. In 1932, the governor of Hunan Province in China stated that it was ‘disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level’ in justification for banning Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Similarly, a group of parents at a school in Kansas objected to Charlotte’s Web on the ground that ‘humans are the highest level of God’s creation and are the only creatures that can communicate vocally. Showing lower life forms with human abilities is sacrilegious and disrespectful to God’. Less surprising, perhaps, are the numerous objections to Orwell’s Animal Farm, a thinly veiled allegory for the formation of the Soviet Union, in which his animal characters can be read as analogues for prominent political figures of the day. Fears that the book would harm relations between the UK and the USSR led to Orwell’s initial inability to find a publisher for it. Upon publication in 1945 it was immediately banned in the USSR, China and Cuba for its criticism of Communism. It was also banned more recently in the United Arab Emirates; the depiction of a talking pig was deemed offensive.
The Canturbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Illustration of The Knight’s Tale by Edward Burne-Jones from the Kelmscott Chaucer, 1896.
Everyone’s favourite category, books banned for naughtiness outnumber all others, and include some cherished favourites and important literary works: the usual suspects include Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Madame Bovary and Ulysses.
Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, though certainly not lacking in naughtiness, is usually considered more important as a landmark of Middle English literature. However, its significance in the literary canon didn’t prevent it from being all but banned under the Comstock Law in the US in 1873, which prohibited the sending of offensive material by mail or over state lines.
Radclyffe Hall. The Well of Loneliness. 1928
Less well known currently, perhaps, is Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, one of the first British novels to deal openly with the subject of lesbianism. While it initially received cautiously positive reviews, The Sunday Express soon began a campaign calling for the novel’s suppression, the paper’s editor stating that he ‘ would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.’ The controversy prompted obscenity trials in both the UK and the US, and it was withdrawn from circulation in the UK until its republication in 1949.
John Gould’s illustration of Darwin’s Rhea, 1841 Charles Darwin. On the Origin of Species. 1860 (Second edition)
The book which sets out Darwin’s theory of theory of evolution by natural selection was judged to have contravened Christian beliefs and created a storm of controversy in Victorian England. It was banned from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge – Darwin’s own college – immediately after its publication. The state of Tennessee banned the book from 1925 to 1967, and it was banned in Yugoslavia in 1935 and Greece in 1937.
The controversy surrounding the Harry Potter series persisted throughout the years of its publication and beyond. Despite their immense popularity, critical and commercial acclaim, and having been credited with inspiring a generation of readers, books in the Harry Potter series have appeared high on the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books since The Philosopher’s Stone appeared in 1997, and are now the most challenged books of the 21st century. Objections largely centre on the novels’ portrayal of magic, citing a promotion of occultism, paganism, Satanism and witchcraft as legitimate reasons for their suppression. Others have cited concerns over violent and dangerous incidents in the plots as potentially distressing to children.
Items from the Summer Catalogue are on display at 100 Fuham Road
“Let us go, then, exploring, this summer morning, when all are adoring the plum blossom and the bee.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando (Summer Catalogue, item 256) (SOLD)
Spanning almost three centuries, our Summer Catalogue brings together our most interesting recent acquisitions. From a collection of poems addressed to a prima ballerina to a record produced by the first African American record label, this selection of rare items is as charming as it is surprising.
Members of Peter Harrington staff have chosen their favourite items from the catalogue to share. To view the entire catalogue, please click here.
Perhaps the best-known translation of the collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk tales most often known as the One Thousand and One Nights or the Arabian Nights, Burton’s The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night was originally published in ten volumes, with six further volumes entitled The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night. Owing to the nature of their content and the strict Victorian laws on obscene material, these sixteen volumes were printed as private editions for subscribers only.
Burton’s translation has not lacked for both admirers and critics over the years, but his idiosyncratic style of translation is perhaps best summed up by Jorge Luis Borges in his essay on ‘The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights’: ‘In some way, the almost inexhaustible process of English is adumbrated in Burton – John Donne’s hard obscenity, the gigantic vocabularies of Shakespeare and Cyril Tourneur, Swinburne’s affinity for the archaic, the crass erudition of the authors of 17th century chapbooks, the energy and imprecision, the love of tempests and magic.’
First collected edition of Wilde’s works, limited to 1,000 sets on handmade paper. The texts were mostly taken from the last editions to be supervised by the author. Copyright in The Picture of Dorian Gray was held by Charles Carrington, so that volume alone appears with his Paris imprint. In 1922 Methuen announced the discovery of a new play by Wilde, For Love of the King: a Burmese Masque, and published it as a pendant volume to the original 14-volume set. The play was denounced by Wilde’s bibliographer Christopher Millard, and, although Methuen won a court case against him, the work is generally accepted to be a forgery by Mabel Wodehouse Pearse, née Cosgrove.
BOETHIUS., David Hume, Published: Antwerp Ex officina Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem Moretumm, 1607 – SOLD
A remarkable association copy, from the library of the Scottish philosopher David Hume, of one of the most notable works of western philosophy, this being the first Bernartius edition, with Hume’s bookplate (State A) to the front pastedown.
Hume was an enthusiastic reader of classical literature and a self-proclaimed Ciceronian too. In his autobiographical essay, published posthumously in 1777, Hume reported that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one he read “most of the celebrated Books in Latin, French, & English”, admitting that he was “secretly devouring” Virgil and Cicero when he should have been reading law. The influence of Cicero in particular pervades Hume’s work – his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion are modelled on Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, and the Essays on Happiness draw strongly on De Finibus – a fact which numerous commentators such as Peter S. Fosl, John Valdimir Price, and Humean editors Norman Kemp Smith and Martin Bell
An article by David Edmonds and John Eidinow outlining this extraordinary clash in more depth can be found here.
The History of England,Catharine Macaulay, 1769 – SOLD
Often referred to as the first Englishwoman to become an historian, Macaulay wrote her History of England from the accession of James I to the elevation of the House of Hanover between 1763 and 1783. From being relatively unknown, the popularity of her History brought her almost overnight celebrity. The work was praised by William Pitt in the House of Commons, and Lord Lyttelton wrote that Macaulay was ‘a very prodigy’. Her republican ideals also brought her approval in America and she became acquainted with Benjamin Franklin, Josiah Quincy, Benjamin Rush, Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, Ezra Styles, and Jonathan Mayhew through her work.
The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson, 1963 – SOLD
A highly influential publication in English Social History from New Left historian E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class appeared in 1963. Thompson’s aim was to ‘rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.’ (p. 12). This copy is a first edition, and a rare find in its original dust jacket.
First edition. The Brussels edition of Les Misérables takes precedence as the first published edition, as the first two volumes were issued in Brussels on 30 or 31 March 1862, preceding the Paris edition by four or five days. The remaining volumes appeared on 15 May 1862.
Copies in the original wrappers are rare in commerce. ABPC locates two copies only in the last 40 years, omitting the latest, that sold in Brussels at Henri Godts Auction, 11 December 2012, wrappers chipped in places, for 36,000.
The Heroycall Epistles of the learned poet Publius Ovidius Naso, Ovid, c. 1584 – BOOK SOLD
Ovid’s Epistulae Heroidum (Letters of Heroines) is a collection of fifteen poems written from the perspective of the heroines of Greek and Roman Tragedy, addressing their various lovers who have abandoned, betrayed and mistreated them.
The Heroides is thought to have had a significant influence on the work of Shakespeare, and this first English translation was likely the version he would have known. The rhetorical virtuosity of Ovid’s heroines can be traced in characters such as Katherina (The Taming of the Shrew) and Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing) and direct and indirect references to Ovid are to be found throughout his plays.
Holly Segar
What’ll You Have?, Julien Proskauer, 1933 – SOLD
Published in New York in 1933, this copy is inscribed by the author just thirteen days after prohibition officially came to an end in America: ‘To Jacquline-or Jo, as we know her, this book is given for she is of that younger generation to whom this book is dedicated x. With the author;s best wishes Julien J. Prosakauer. Dec 18, 1933.’ Also inscribed are several uncommon cocktail recipe variations, including a ‘Queen Jocelyn’.
Pippi Långstrump, Astrid Lindgren, 1945-48 – SOLD
The first editions of the first three Pipi Longstocking novels, Pippi Långstrump; Pippi Långstrump går ombord; Pippi Långstrump i Söderhavet (1945-4), in the original Swedish. Originally told as stories to her daughter Karin, Lindgren later wrote the first manuscript during a convalescent period in 1944. After being rejected by the publisher she originally submitted it to, Lindgren revised the story and entered it into a children’s book competition run by relatively new publisher Rabén & Sjögren, which she won. It was then published with illustrations by Ingrid Vang Nyman in 1945.
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, and happily without the expected recital of the Sonnets, we’ve put together a list of literary greats as they fawn over one another in displays of love, mentorship and camaraderie. There were so many examples, in fact , that this blog will be a two-parter. Check back next week for the second installment.
Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller
Over the course of a correspondence that lasted more than twenty years, Nin and Miller came to represent the bohemian ideal of both love and sex in modern times. Their adventures in Paris together at the break of the Second World War – Nin married but somewhat estranged from her husband; Miller married and encouraging both his wife and Nin on a venture of sexual discovery – culminated in a furious love affair and an inimical divorce.
Scenario (A film with sound) by Henry Miller, published 1937, first edition, first printing, inscribed by the author to Hans Reichel
The following excerpts are taken from various letters written and received in the early 1930’s, firstly from Nin to Miller…
“You destroy and you suffer… I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.
In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you.
And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate.”
“Something stirs in me as I look at it, and it is certainly the human you. It is a vision of the human you revealing an amazing delicacy to me. It is your khaki shirt and you are the man who is the axis of my world now. I revolve around the richness of your being.
‘Come closer to me, come closer. I promise you it will be beautiful.’
You keep your promise.”
…with examples of Miller’s own declarations of love in 1932 equally impassioned, as follows:
“Anais:
Don’t expect me to be sane anymore. Don’t let’s be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes—you can’t dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous. You became a woman with me. I was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old—you are a thousand years old.
Here I am back and still smouldering with passion, like wine smoking. Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. I read the paper about suicides and murders and I understand it all thoroughly. I feel murderous, suicidal. I feel somehow that it is a disgrace to do nothing, to just bide one’s time, to take it philosophically, to be sensible. Where has gone the time when men fought, killed, died for a glove, a glance, etc?”
Eventually, through the intensity of both their passion for each other and the pressures and pleasures of their many respective lovers, Nin and Miller allowed themselves to drift apart. Their lives remained inescapably interwoven until Anaïs’ death in 1977.
Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas
The written evidence of Wilde and Douglas’ love affair was given up to the scrutiny of the courts during the now infamous trial of the former, condemning the duo utterly in the eyes of 1895’s outraged intolerance.
Wilde to Douglas, 1985:
My Own Boy,
Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days. Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there to cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things, and come here whenever you like. It is a lovely place and lacks only you; but go to Salisbury first.
Always, with undying love,
Yours, Oscar
The Ballad of Reading Gaol. By C.3.3. (Oscar Wilde), first edition, first printing, with a poem on verso title page written by George Ives condemning Wilde’s betrayers.
Douglas to Wilde, 1897:
My dearest Oscar,
My time with you just now was such a glorious reunion. I can still feel the effect of your hands on my skin, your lips against mine. I cannot wait to see you again, even now my thoughts are only of you and being near you. I can hardly bear it, this distance between us. Only knowing it is temporary makes it something which I can endure.
You are right to say that things must begin fresh, that we must build something new. Things will be different when we are in Naples. There is so much art, so much architecture – your body and mine. That will remain the same, at least.
I long to feel your lips against my skin – all of my skin, all of it, everywhere.
I remain your darling boy, now and always,
Bosie.
Fifteen years his senior, Wilde was accused by Douglas’ father, the Marquess of Queensberry, of attempting to corrupt his son. While the court case remains much quoted along with the poet-playwright himself, the letters are not so much in the public eye. Imprisoned for Gross Indecency in 1895, Wilde wrote a 50,000 word letter to Douglas that he was allowed to keep upon his release. De Profundis or, From the Depths, serves as an account of all that happened, and all that the artist felt. The last letter Wilde wrote to Douglas before his imprisonment in 1895 is this:
My dearest boy,
This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonour be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you love me in return will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently. Since the hope, nay rather the certainty, of meeting you again in some world is the goal and the encouragement of my present life, ah! I must continue to live in this world because of that.
Wilde spent the last three years of his life abroad in exile, where he was joined for a matter of months by Douglas until they were separated by their families with the threat of a cutting-off of funds.
In the autumn of 1900, Wilde realised he was dying of meningitis, related to an injury sustained in prison, yet Douglas did not return to be with him when he died. Douglas went on to live for another 45 years, marrying two years after Wilde’s death, and later condemning both his past lover’s works and his homosexuality.
Virgina Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
The most famous of Virginia Woolf’s affairs was with The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, more commonly known to contemporary readers as Vita Sackville-West. First meeting in 1922, having both belonged to social circles that accepted sexual exploration if not endorsed it entirely, the two women fell into a passionate relationship that transformed them both.
Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf, published 1922, first edition, first impression, one of 1200.
Woolf to West, 1926:
“Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.”
West to Woolf 1927:
“…I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it should lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it….”
Perhaps the greatest love letter from the author to the Lady was her novel Orlando, written as a tribute. A small act of revenge in retaliation to one of their many disputes, it is also an act of affection, in which Woolf restores one of Vita’s most desired possessions, family estate Knole House. Their affair lasted until late 1927 or perhaps early 1928, though their friendship continued until Woolf’s suicide in 1941.
The Arabian Nights, Richard F. Burton, 1885–8
BOETHIUS., David Hume, Published: Antwerp Ex officina Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem Moretumm, 1607 – SOLD
The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson, 1963 – SOLD
The Heroycall Epistles of the learned poet Publius Ovidius Naso , Ovid, c. 1584 – BOOK SOLD
Pippi Långstrump, Astrid Lindgren, 1945-48 – SOLD
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