Banned books through history is a long list that includes the literary classics
Ulysses and
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell
After initially earning irate outcries from former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin with the publication of
Animal Farm—a fable that served as an allegory for the acts that took place during the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and that depicted Stalin’s betrayal of its initial cause—in 1945, George Orwell went even further to sour his image in the eyes of the infamous dictator when we wrote
Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949. Stalin viewed the text as an unwanted commentary on his ruling style, leading him to display his power to ban it in the Soviet Union, which remained in effect until 1990. The controversial novel followed an average citizen in his attempt to escape the omnipresent eye of a dystopian government and espoused themes concerning the nature of nationalism, sexual repression, censorship, and privacy. It is important to note that
Nineteen Eighty-Four stirred controversy in places other than Russia. Various social groups in the United States also denounced the novel and attempted to have it removed from bookstores. What is ironic about these attacks on the novel, though, is that factions from opposite ends of the political spectrum both wanted it banned—some claiming that it was pro-communism while others claiming that it was antigovernment. However, today Orwell’s novel is celebrated by many as an insightful and, in some cases, clairvoyant commentary on the possible outcomes of ubiquitous, overly bureaucratic government institutions.
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
James Joyce’s Ulysses has tiptoed the line between obscene and genius since its serial publication in 1918–20. The novel—which chronicles the day of struggling artist Stephen Dedalus, Jewish ad man Leopold Bloom, and Leopold’s cuckolding wife Molly Bloom—was met simultaneously with approbation by Joyce’s Modernist contemporaries, such as Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, and disdain by antiobscenity advocates in English-speaking countries. Committees in the United States such as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice successfully worked toward the banning of Ulysses after an excerpt in which the main character pleasured himself was published. It was thus considered contraband in America for over a decade until the landmark obscenity court case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses in 1933 lifted the ban. The United Kingdom similarly banned the novel until the mid-1930s for its explicit sexuality and graphic depiction of bodily functions. Australia, however, enforced the novel’s suppression on-and-off from its publication until the mid-1950s, as a former customs minister claimed that “[Ulysses] holds up to ridicule the Creator and the Church … Such books might vitally affect the standard of Australian home life. It cannot be tolerated in Australia any longer.” Although some may presently view the book as obscene and unfit for public reading, universities across the globe hold Ulysses in the highest esteem for its deft display of stream-of-consciousness as well as its meticulously structured plot that intertwines various themes about the struggles of the “Modern Man.”
https://www.britannica.com/list/8-banned-books-through-time