Banned Books of the Mid-Twentieth Century

Recently, this question arrived in the BOTD inbox:

“Interested in looking through the Index listings for the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Can this be found online?”

The answer is YES. All of J.M. de Bujanda et al.’s Index des Livres Interdits may be found online via Google Books here.

I also went ahead and broke down my response by year to more specifically address the above question:

193019401950
193119411951
193219421952
193319431953
193419441954
193519451955
193619461956
193719471957
193819481958
193919491959

Of course, you can also insert any other years into the “Search in this book” bar. As in the canned searches above, just make sure to disregard from the results any entries that do not refer to condemnations but are rather an author’s birth or death year, for example.

Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (1618-21)

Source: Digital Library, Museo Galileo

KEPLER, Johannes (1571-1630), Epitome of Copernican Astronomy & Harmonies of the World. Translated from the Latin to English by Charles Glenn Wallis. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995.

Original citation: Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, usitata forma quaestionum et responsionum conscripta. Linz [Austria]: Johann Planck, 1618-21 [published in three parts].  

Condemned: May 10, 1619. 

Removed from Index: 1822.  

§2: Books including any heresy or schism attempting to destroy religious orthodoxy;

§7: Books engaged in any kind of superstition, fortune-telling, magic, spirit-conjuring, or other similar occult topics.

Read more

The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930)

Note: After the attempted insurrection — a “putsch,” as one ABC News commentator called it — at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. two days ago, I felt it was necessary to post the following material. Originally I had planned to save this section for the manuscript I have very slowly been working on over the last several years. But since I am already engrossed in a different manuscript project — one that actually has a publishing contract and, thus, a hard deadline — due to its timeliness I felt compelled to post it here instead.

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi associates, including this article’s subject, Alfred Rosenberg, perpetrated in Munich in November of 1923 an armed, attempted coup. Later, this event would become known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” Before it could be put down, 16 Nazi Party members and four police officers had died. Though it failed, many historians point to it as the start of the rise of the Nazis’ genocidal, fascist regime.

Source: Widerstand!? [“Resistance!?”]

ROSENBERG, Alfred (1893-1946), The Myth of the Twentieth Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-intellectual Confrontations of Our Age. Translated from the German to English by Vivian Bird (1st English ed.). Torrance, CA: Noontide Press, 1982.   

Original citation: Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts: Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkâmpfe unserer Zeit. München (Munich): Hoheneichen-Verlag, 1930. 

Condemned: February 7, 1934. 

Additional notes/condemnations: Also see STROOTHENKE, Wolfgang (1913-1945), Erbpflege und Christentum; Fragen der Sterilisation, Aufnordung, Euthanasie, Ehe. Mit einem Geleitwort von Fritz Lenz. Leipzig: L. Klotz, 1940. Condemned: February 19, 1941. 

§2: Books including any heresy or schism attempting to destroy religious orthodoxy;

§3: Books that attempt to attack religion or good morals;

§4: Books by non-Catholics dealing in any way with religion (unless in total agreement with Catholic dogma);

§5: Books and booklets including mention of any new appearances [of saints or other divine spirits], revelations, visions, prophecies, and miracles, even under the pretext of private publication;

§6: Books that scorn or ridicule the Church or Catholic dogma in any way;

§7: Books engaged in any kind of superstition, fortune-telling, magic, spirit-conjuring, or other similar occult topics.

Read more

An Update

Apologies for not posting more lately!

I am happy to report, however, that during the last three months’ hiatus I’ve been busy working on the longer-term version (and vision) of this project. I’ve been developing the draft manuscript that will, with luck, someday become a full-length book. This work has been concentrated mostly within my week-long research visits to the Houghton Library and the Harvard University Library system in general since July of last year. With those resources and the (so far) three weeks of dedicated time for reading, outlining, and writing, I feel confident that I am now well on my way.

If you’ve missed my posts on the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Blog related to the first two of these trips, see July’s here and October’s here. The post for my most recent trip, January 20-27, 2019, will be posted shortly at the same location (see my Instagram account linked above for a few photos and notes). My final week at Harvard will most likely take place this upcoming May or June.

As a bit of a preview, below is an outline of the annotated bibliography section of my current draft outline — the “Bibliography of the Damned” itself. These 46 author entries correspond with four chronological categories…with a twist for the fifth that you’ll have to wait for the book to find out the meaning of. Mystery!

Also: This outline is subject to change.

Part III: A Bibliography of the Damned

  1. Circa 1600 to 1700
    • BRUNO, Giordano
    • COPERNICUS, Nicolaus (Micołaj Kopernik)
    • DELLON, Charles
    • DESCARTES, René
    • GALILEO Galilei
    • HOBBES, Thomas
    • KEPLER, Johannes
    • SPINOZA, Baruch (Benedictus de)
    • PERKINS, William
    • WILKINS, John
  2. 1700 to 1800
    • DARWIN, Erasmus
    • DIDEROT, Denis
    • ENGEL, Samuel
    • GIBBON, Edward
    • KANT, Emmanuel
    • MANDEVILLE, Bernard
    • MIDDLETON, Conyers
    • “PARKER” [Anonymous]
    • ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques
    • VOLTAIRE (François-Marie Arouet)
  3. 1800 to 1900
    • CASANOVA (Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seignault)
    • CIOCCI, Raffaele
    • FLAUBERT, Gustave
    • HUGO, Victor
    • MORGAN, Lady Sydney Owenson
    • RICHMOND, Legh
    • SAND, George (Amandine Lucile Aurore Dupin)
    • STENDHAL (Marie-Henri Beyle)
    • VÉRICOUR, Louis
    • WHATELY, Richard
  4. 1900 to 1966
    • BEAUVOIR, Simone de
    • DELLHORA, Guillermo
    • HOUTIN, Albert
    • KAZANTZAKIS, Nikos
    • ROSENBERG, Alfred
    • SARTRE, Jean-Paul
    • STEINMANN, Jean
    • STROOTHENKE, Wolfgang
    • SULLIVAN, William Lawrence
    • UNAMUNO, Miguel de
  5. Works out of Time
    • DANTE Alighieri
    • JULIANUS AUGUSTUS, Flavius Claudius (Julian the Apostate)
    • LUCRETIUS (Titus Lucretius Carus)
    • LUTHER, Martin
    • MERLIN (the Wizard)
    • TACITUS, Publius Cornelius

The Discovery of a World in the Moone (1638)

First title page. Source: Houghton Library, Harvard University (photograph by the author)

WILKINS, John, The Discovery of a World in the Moone. Or, A Discourse Tending to Prove That ‘Tis Probable There May Be Another Habitable World in That Planet [eBook via archive.org]. London: Printed by E[dward]. G[riffin]. for Michael Sparke and Edward Forrest, 1638.

Original condemned citation: A Discovery of a new world, or a discourse tending to prove that ’tis probable there may be another habitable world in the moon, with a discourse concerning the probability of a passage thither. London: Printed by John Norton for John Maynard, 1640; first condemned in French: Le Monde dans la Lune [Divisé en deux livres. Le premier, prouvant que la Lune peut estre un monde. Le second, que la Terre peut estre une planette.] [Translated by Sieur de La Montagne]. Rouen: Jacques Cailloué, 1655.

Condemned: April 25, 1701.

§4: Books by non-Catholics dealing in any way with religion (unless in total agreement with Catholic dogma).

§7: Books engaged in any kind of superstition, fortune-telling, magic, spirit-conjuring, or other similar occult topics.

Read more

The Last Temptation of Christ (1952)

Since it is still under copyright restrictions, open-access eBook or other digitized versions of this text in the original or translation are not currently available. The source of this image of the first-edition cover is an auction on the German version of eBay.

KAZANTZAKIS, Nikos, The Last Temptation of Christ. Translated by P.A. Bien. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998; 1988; 1960.

Original citation: Ο τελευταίος πειρασμός [O telefteos pirasmos] — Die letzte Versuchung [German translation by Werner Kerbs]. Berlin-Grunewald: F. A. Herbig, 1952.

Condemned: December 16, 1953.

§4: Books by non-Catholics dealing in any way with religion (unless in total agreement with Catholic dogma).

§9: Books which professedly discuss, describe, or teach impure and obscene topics.

§11: Books containing apocrypha.

Additional notes: Not published in Greek until 1955; highly censured (but not officially banned) by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church. 

Read more

Scarlet and Black (1831)

Source: Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France).

STENDHAL (Henri Beyle), Scarlet and Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth century. Translated by Margaret R.B. Shaw. Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1983; 1953.  

Original citation: Le Rouge et le noir. Paris:  A. Levasseur, 1831.

Condemned: June 20, 1864 to 1900.

§3: Books that attempt to attack religion or good morals.

§9: Books which professedly discuss, describe, or teach impure and obscene topics.

Read more

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831)

Notre-Dame_de_Paris_T_1_Hugo_Victor_btv1b8615824j
Source: Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France).

HUGO, Victor, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Translated by Walter Cobb. New York: Signet Classics/Chamberlain Bros., 2005.

Original citation: Notre-Dame de Paris. Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1831.

Condemned: July 28, 1834.

§3: Books that attempt to attack religion or good morals;

§6: Books that scorn or ridicule the Church or Catholic dogma in any way;

§7: Books engaged in any kind of superstition, fortune-telling, magic, spirit-conjuring, or other similar occult topics;

§9: Books which professedly discuss, describe, or teach impure and obscene topics.

Read more

Madame Bovary (1857)

dul1.ark__13960_t1mg8vq27-11-1510757458
Source: HathiTrust (digitized by Internet Archive; original from Duke University)

FLAUBERT, Gustave, Madame Bovary. Translated by Francis Steegmuller. New York: Random House, 1957; 1950.

Original citation: Madame Bovary, moeurs de province. Paris: Michel Lévy, 1857.

Condemned: June 20, 1864.

§3: Books that attempt to attack religion or good morals;

§6: Books that scorn or ridicule the Church or Catholic dogma in any way;

§8: Books which declare duels, suicide, or divorce as licit, or that deal with Freemasonry;

§9: Books which professedly discuss, describe, or teach impure and obscene topics.

Read more