Each year the American Library Association (ALA) puts out the top ten challenged books and the majority cite sexual content as a reason for the challenge. For 2019, 9 out of 10 books were cited for something to do with sexuality (ranging from gender and sexual orientation exploration to explicit sexual scenes). For 2020, four out of the 10 books on that list are challenged for sexual content while the other six are about racism and/or the police system.
But censorship has an interesting, if not torrid, history. Previously, each book was put to the test of a 14-year-old schoolgirl—if it was acceptable for their eyes, it could be published. This obviously meant that many works were deemed obscene due to their explicit scenes, otherwise called “purple passages.” One too many of these purple passages and the book could be tossed. But the ripple of censorship spread farther than just silencing books. The ripple effect empowered authority figures—police, customs officials, and post office workers—to search and seize and “obscene” material and to accuse those involved. It was an outright war of literary legitimacy.
Below are a few of the many important books that helped revolutionize the Obscene Publications Act. Through these works, the term “obscene” in the world of literature was redefined, different sexualities were brought to the forefront, and these people and stories were legitimized by legal publications. Through these and the many other challenged books, we can see that literature, in itself, does no harm at all. The true harm, falsely attributed to the books, is caused by the actions of those who try to censor, suppress, and silence.
120 Days of Sodom, or, The School of Libertinage by the Marquis de Sade
There’s a chance you haven’t heard of 120 Days of Sodom. Or, perhaps, you’ve heard of it and are (reasonably) hesitant about it. According to extensive research by The Guardian, 120 Days of Sodom is considered the “most impure tale ever written.” This impure tale is about four libertines—a duke, a bishop, a judge, and a banker. Locking themselves in a castle in the Black Forest, the four men are attended by “two harems of teenage boys and girls specifically abducted for the occasion.” Additionally, there are four aging brothel madams who act as the storytellers for these four months. Their duty is to introduce and request the 150 “passions” or, better put, perversions. Truly, some (most) of the perversions are too obscene to relay here, but the content varies dramatically from brutal physical violence to emotional and mental turmoil to the really sick and depraved. As the Guardian says, “120 Days is not a work that seduces its readers: it assaults them.”
Sade wrote parts of 120 Days of Sodom while imprisoned in the Bastille. He kept it in a copper cylinder squirreled away in a crevice of the stone wall. On 3 July 1789, Sade was removed from the Bastille (kicking and screaming, I’m sure) and put in a psychiatric ward. Ten days later, on 14 July 1789, the French lower class stormed the Bastille. Sade never saw his work again.
Miraculously the manuscript escaped the storming of the Bastille and was promptly sold to another aristocrat, the Marquis de Villeneuve-Trans, where it remained for the next century. From there, the German collector who bought the manuscript from the Villeneuve-Trans family allowed sexologist Iwan Bloch to publish the novel for the first time in 1904. It was still considered obscene and promptly banned.
After the revised Obscene Publications Act in 1960 (spearheaded by Lady Chatterley’s Lover, another important banned book), publishers were emboldened to publish Sade’s work. However, six years later, Ian Brady would be convicted of the Moors Murders and, at his home, a copy of Sade’s Justine was found. Due to the horrid nature of those crimes, Sade’s work seemed “significant” in Brady’s mental headspace so yet another publication ban was slapped on all of Sade’s works. This ban remained in effect for more than 20 years.
In 1982, Sade’s descendants, the Nouailles family (who had bought back the original scroll in 1929) entrusted it for renewed publication with the publisher Jean Grouet. However, they were swindled as Grouet smuggled the work into Switzerland and sold it to erotica publisher, Gerad Nordmann. Decades of a legal battle between the Nouallies and Nordmann’s ensued, only coming to a close in 2014 when the scroll was purchased by a private foundation and put on display in Paris. Crazily enough, the director of the foundation was shortly after arrested on fraud charges and Sade’s famous scroll is back in jail, awaiting its future.
While the scroll’s fate is still undecided, Penguin Books (and other companies) have since published Sade’s groundbreaking work. Now 120 Days, filled to the brim with gruesome scenes, sits proudly amongst other significant works of literature, telling the world that while intense, this is still of importance. Not only is the literary world forever changed because of the publication—and distribution—of this novel, but so is the world of sex and sexuality. Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing coined the term “sadism” in honor of Sade and his school of libertinage.
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
What (almost) worked in the courts’ favor regarding Sade’s 120 Days was its remarkable revulsion—it was easy to see that it be banned. But with other works, it was getting harder and harder to define obscene. DH Lawrence’s novel was officially declared obscene in the US and its publication and distribution were banned domestically in 1929. This ruling would be overturned 30 years later when the book was found to have been written with “power and tenderness which was compelling.”
Coincidentally, Lady Chatterley followed a similar course in England. Even though the newly revised Obscene Publication Act of 1959 promised “to provide for the protection of literature” after reading four chapters, attorney general, Reginald Manningham-Buller, declared Lady Chatterley still obscene (if not considered it moreso) and moved forward with prosecuting Penguin Books for publishing it. In another excellent Guardian article, the key factor in this decision to prosecute came from Penguin proposing to sell the book “within easy reach of women and the working class.”
To the upper-middle-class lawyers and politicians, it was clear Lady Chatterley had the “tendency to deprave and corrupt” but with the 1959 Act, books now had to be “taken as a whole,” not considered solely on the explicit scenes, called “purple passages.” Furthermore, even if the jury found the book to “deprave and corrupt,” the publisher had the chance of acquittal if there was justification in “the interests of science, literature, art, and learning or any other object of general concern.”
After Penguin Books won the case against them, they sold 3 million copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Oz magazine
Even after the revised Obscene Publications Act and Lady Chatterley’s trial, literature on sex and sexuality was still under fire. Oz magazine was an independently-published alternative/underground magazine that contained “everything the establishment hated” such as “gay liberation, feminism, sex, the pill, acid, rock music, Vietnam.” Oz was originally printed in Sydney in 1963, but in 1967 a parallel version started in London. Spearheading both country’s offices was creator Richard Neville. He and his co-editors would be arrested on obscenity charges in both countries.
In 1970, to revamp a little by re-connecting with the youth, the infamous Schoolkids issue emerged where Oz was dutifully handed over to a group of teenagers who were given no ground rules. Unfortunately, dubbing issue 28 as “Schoolkids Oz” made some think the content was intended for school-aged children. Since Oz’s stance was to be “everything the establishment hated” as co-editor of Oz London, Jim Anderson says, the content was considered not school-age appropriate. As a result, Neville, Anderson, and other co-editor Felix Dennis were charged with “conspiracy to corrupt public morals” which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
While the three heads of Oz were not charged with corrupting the youth, they were found guilty of other obscenity charges and were sentenced to prison—upon arrival, all three of the men’s luscious, long 60s locks were shorn off. It didn’t take long for them to appeal and, because the judge greatly misdirected the jury, Oz magazine was successfully appealed in 1971. With this success, “works of no literary merit” were added to the Obscene Publications Act.
Inside Linda Lovelace by Linda Lovelace
Another amendment to the Obscene Publications Act, in 1977, was that of works considered “demerit.” This was brought on by adult film star Linda Lovelace’s memoir, Inside Linda Lovelace. While the prosecutors wanted to take down the book, the following acquittal works of “demerit” were also safe. According to a Cambridge article, the failure to successfully prosecute Lovelace’s publishers “meant that the law was unlikely to be invoked again against the written word.” We can certainly hope.
By Shelby Lueders