Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds Book

In 1961, the United States Supreme Court pondered whether D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was lewd or literary. In 1969, the novel was required reading in many college literature courses. Changing sexual mores have moved many formerly forbidden books out of locked cabinets and into libraries and classrooms. Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds is the first reference work to examine the issues underlying the suppression of over one hundred sexually "obscene" works.

Works covered include:
-- Across the River and into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway
-- Adam Bede, George Eliot
-- An American Dream, Norman Mailer
-- An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
-- Aphrodite, Pierre Louys
-- The Arabian Nights, Sir Richard Burton, trans.
-- The Art of Love, Ovid
-- The Awakening, Kate Chopin
-- Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
-- The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath
-- 1984, George Orwell
-- November, Gustave Flaubert
-- Ode to Charlotte Corday, Andre Chenier
-- Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
-- Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
-- The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
-- La Terre, Emile Zola
-- Ulysses, James Joyce
-- Verses, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

VOYA

These two titles from the Banned Books series include both fiction and nonfiction books challenged historically and recently on the basis of sexual and social content. The volumes share a basic format: an introduction (the same in each), stressing the importance of First Amendment rights; a foreword written by individuals representing First Amendment rights organizations; a preface by author Sova offering a brief history of the banning of books on sexual and social grounds; an alphabetical listing of titles included; the main body of the work which includes an alphabetical listing of challenged titles, plot summary, and censorship history; brief biographies of authors listed; a bibliography; a listing of works discussed in other volumes of the series; and finally, an index that includes all four volumes. Sexual Grounds focuses, for the most part, on adult novels. Familiar titles are found-Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear, Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Miller's Tropic of Cancer-as well as some lesser-known entries such as Kauffmann's The Philanderer (Simon & Schuster, 1953), Phillips's Susan Lenox (Appleton, 1917) and Donleavy's The Ginger Man (Seymour Lawrence, 1965). Many of the titles are older, with the focus on heterosexual relationships. Plot summaries and censorship histories are brief yet informative. Representing the YA genre are two from Judy Blume: Forever, and Then Again, Maybe I Won't. Both are classified as "young adult novels" although Then Again is almost always found in the children's area. Other titles of interest to YAs are Morrison's The Bluest Eye, King's Christine, and Keyes's Flowers for Algernon. Titles included in the Social Grounds volume represent a broader perspective. Several YA classics are discussed: Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Blume's Blubber, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Garden's Annie on My Mind, and more. The classification of titles is puzzling, however. Why are Garden's Annie and Wilder's Little House on the Prairie considered "young adult novels" while Go Ask Alice, Cormier's The Chocolate War, and Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia are labeled "novels"? In general the entries, which provide a good overview of the topics, are readable and thought-provoking. The information is documented (one error occurs in Sexual Grounds: Moorpark High School is in Sunnyvale, California, not Sunneyville) and there are citations for further study. As with any resource, some titles are omitted. There is no mention of frequently challenged novels read by young adults such as any of Norma Klein's frank YA titles, Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle, Hinton's The Outsiders, Crutcher's Running Loose, or Koertge's Arizona Kid. Despite this, the Banned Books series is a good companion to Hit List: Frequently Challenged Books for Young Adults (ALA, 1996/VOYA February 1997) and the annual Banned Books Resource Guide published by American Library Association. The Banned Books series is a scholarly look at challenged titles over a long period, and it is interesting to see what has been challenged and why. The series will be useful for reports and, especially in public libraries, will encourage some provocative book displays. Index. Biblio. Source Notes. Further Reading. Note: This review was written and published to address two titles: Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds and Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds.