Books have been banned, burned, confiscated, hidden, smuggled, and suppressed for as long as books have existed. The specific reasons change with the times, but the impulse doesn’t. Somewhere, right now, someone in a position of authority is deciding that a particular book is too dangerous for other people to read. I find the history of book banning fascinating, not because I sympathize with the banners, but because the reasons they give reveal so much about what each era fears most.

Before the Printing Press

You might think book banning started with the printing press, since mass production is what makes a book genuinely hard to suppress. But people were banning texts long before Gutenberg. In 221 BCE, the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the burning of books that didn’t align with his political philosophy. The target was primarily Confucian texts and historical records from rival states. According to historical accounts, scholars who resisted were buried alive alongside their libraries. The emperor wanted a clean slate, a unified state with a single approved narrative of history, and books from the old order were obstacles to that vision.

In ancient Rome, authorities occasionally ordered the burning of books they considered subversive. The poet Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria” (The Art of Love) was reportedly banned from public libraries by Emperor Augustus, possibly because its frank treatment of romantic pursuit embarrassed the emperor’s campaign for moral reform. Ovid himself was eventually exiled, though the exact reasons remain debated. The pattern, though, is clear: a text that challenges the prevailing moral or political order attracts the attention of people who enforce that order.

In the medieval period, the Catholic Church became the most systematic book-banning institution in Western history. Long before the formal creation of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (which I’ll get to shortly), local bishops and church councils condemned individual texts. The targets were usually heretical religious works, but the net was cast wider than that. Translations of the Bible into vernacular languages were suppressed, because the Church wanted to control interpretation through the clergy rather than letting ordinary people read scripture for themselves. John Wycliffe’s English translation of the Bible in the 14th century was condemned, and copies were burned. The message was clear: some knowledge is reserved for those in authority.

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum

The most famous formal book-banning system in history is the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Index of Forbidden Books maintained by the Catholic Church from 1559 to 1966. Yes, 1966. This wasn’t a medieval relic. It was actively maintained and updated into the age of television, rock and roll, and the space program.

The Index was created by Pope Paul IV in 1559, partly as a response to the explosion of printed material that followed the invention of the printing press. Before printing, heretical texts could be suppressed relatively easily because they existed in small numbers of handwritten copies. After printing, a single press run could produce hundreds or thousands of copies that spread across borders faster than any authority could track them. The Index was an attempt to impose order on this flood of uncontrolled information, which, when you think about it, sounds remarkably like contemporary debates about regulating the internet.

The list of books on the Index reads like a syllabus for the best education you could possibly get. Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” was on it, because his heliocentric model contradicted Church teaching. Descartes’ philosophical works were on it. Voltaire made the list. Rousseau was there. David Hume. Immanuel Kant. John Locke. Victor Hugo. Gustave Flaubert. Jean-Paul Sartre. Simone de Beauvoir. At one point, the Index included virtually every significant work of Enlightenment philosophy, modern science, and literary realism produced in Europe.

I sometimes think the Index inadvertently functioned as the world’s best reading list. If you wanted to know which books contained the most challenging, thought-provoking, paradigm-shifting ideas in Western civilization, the Catholic Church had helpfully compiled them all in one place. All you had to do was read the books they told you not to read.

Book Banning in England and Colonial America

In England, the history of book banning is intertwined with the history of censorship and licensing. From the 16th century through the late 17th century, the English government maintained a licensing system that required all printed material to be approved before publication. The Stationers’ Company, a guild of printers and booksellers, enforced this system, which meant that the people who profited from controlling the book trade were also the people tasked with preventing unauthorized publications. It was a cozy arrangement for everyone except authors and readers.

John Milton’s “Areopagitica,” published in 1644, is one of the earliest and most famous arguments against pre-publication censorship. Milton, who was himself no stranger to controversy (his defense of divorce on grounds of incompatibility had scandalized Puritan England), argued that the free exchange of ideas was necessary for the discovery of truth. He didn’t go so far as to argue for complete freedom of the press; he specifically excluded Catholic works from his defense of free expression, which is a reminder that even the greatest champions of liberty often have blind spots.

In colonial America, book banning was sporadic but real. Massachusetts banned Thomas Morton’s “New English Canaan” in 1637, partly because it criticized the Puritans. Various colonies banned or restricted works that were considered blasphemous, seditious, or morally corrupting. After independence, the First Amendment prohibited Congress from making laws that abridged freedom of the press, but this didn’t stop state and local governments from restricting books, particularly on grounds of obscenity.

The Comstock Era

The most aggressive period of book banning in American history came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, driven largely by one man: Anthony Comstock. Comstock was a special agent of the United States Postal Service who made it his personal mission to rid the country of what he considered obscene material. In 1873, he successfully lobbied Congress to pass what became known as the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material through the mail. Since the mail was the primary distribution channel for books and periodicals, this gave Comstock enormous power over what Americans could read.

Over the course of his career, Comstock claimed to have destroyed 15 tons of books and nearly 4 million pictures. He prosecuted publishers, booksellers, and authors with a zeal that bordered on obsession. Among the works he targeted were medical texts about human anatomy, early family planning literature by Margaret Sanger, and novels that contained descriptions of sex or adultery. He was particularly offended by any material that discussed contraception, which he considered equivalent to pornography.

Comstock’s influence extended well beyond his own actions. His success emboldened local censorship groups across the country. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Boston Watch and Ward Society, and similar organizations actively patrolled bookstores and libraries, threatening legal action against anyone who sold or lent books they deemed inappropriate. The phrase “banned in Boston” became a badge of honor for publishers and a marketing advantage, since readers assumed that any book Boston tried to suppress must be worth reading.

The Twentieth Century’s Greatest Hits

The 20th century produced a remarkable number of banned books that are now considered masterpieces. James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was banned in the United States from 1921 to 1933 on grounds of obscenity. The ban was overturned in a landmark decision by Judge John M. Woolsey, who wrote that while the book was frank in its treatment of sexuality, it was not pornographic because it did not aim to arouse the reader. This decision established an important precedent: literary merit could be a defense against obscenity charges.

D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was banned in both the United States and the United Kingdom for decades. The UK trial in 1960 is particularly memorable because the prosecution asked the jury whether they would be comfortable with their wives and servants reading the book, a question that revealed more about the prosecutor’s class assumptions than about the book’s content. The jury acquitted, and the resulting publicity made the novel a bestseller.

In the United States, the list of books challenged or banned in schools and public libraries during the 20th century includes some of the most widely read and widely taught novels in the American canon. “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger was removed from schools for profanity and depictions of teenage alienation. “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee was challenged for its depictions of racism, which is ironic given that the novel is one of the most widely used texts for teaching about racism and injustice. “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley was banned for sexual content and anti-religious themes. “1984” by George Orwell was challenged for, depending on who was doing the challenging, being pro-communist or anti-communist.

The fact that “1984” has been challenged by people on opposite ends of the political spectrum tells you something interesting about book banning: the same book can offend different people for completely different reasons. This makes the banning impulse harder to understand as a coherent ideology and easier to understand as a general anxiety about ideas that make people uncomfortable.

Book Banning Today

Book banning has not gone away. In the United States, challenges to books in schools and public libraries have actually increased dramatically in recent years. The American Library Association reported over 1,200 demands to censor library materials in 2022, the highest number since they began tracking in the early 2000s. Many of these challenges target books that deal with race, gender identity, and sexuality. Others target books with graphic content, profanity, or depictions of violence.

The current wave of book challenges differs from earlier ones in some important ways. Historically, book banning was often the project of a single individual or a small local group. Today, it’s frequently coordinated by national organizations that provide model legislation, talking points, and lists of books to challenge. This has made the process more efficient and more widespread. A book that gets challenged in one school district can quickly face challenges in dozens of others, because the same organizations are operating in all of them.

I have opinions about this, and I’ll share them. I think adults should have the right to decide what they read, full stop. I think parents have a reasonable interest in knowing what their children are reading, but I don’t think any parent should have the power to determine what other people’s children can read. When a parent demands that a book be removed from a school library, they’re not just making a decision for their own child. They’re making a decision for every child in the school. That’s an exercise of power over other families, and I think it’s wrong.

I also think that discomfort is not a sufficient reason to ban a book. Literature is supposed to be uncomfortable sometimes. It’s supposed to challenge your assumptions, expose you to perspectives different from your own, and make you think about things you’d rather not think about. A library that only contains books that nobody objects to is a library that has failed its mission.

The International Picture

Book banning is a global phenomenon, and the reasons vary dramatically by country and culture. In China, the government maintains extensive control over publishing and regularly bans books that criticize the Communist Party, discuss Taiwanese independence, or provide unauthorized accounts of recent Chinese history. Foreign books are routinely censored or blocked from importation. The entire publishing ecosystem operates under a system of pre-publication review that would be familiar to the 16th-century English licensors I mentioned earlier.

In Russia, books have been banned or restricted on grounds of “extremism,” a category so broad that it has been used against everything from religious texts to children’s literature. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publications were banned in 2017 under the country’s anti-extremism laws, and various works of historical scholarship have been restricted for presenting views of World War II that differ from the official Russian narrative.

In several Middle Eastern countries, books that discuss homosexuality, criticize Islam, or challenge traditional gender roles are routinely banned. Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” was banned in multiple countries after its publication in 1988 and resulted in a fatwa calling for the author’s death, one of the most extreme responses to a book in modern history.

Even in countries with strong free-speech traditions, book banning persists in various forms. In Australia, a customs system has historically restricted the importation of books deemed offensive. In Canada, certain books have been challenged in schools for content related to race and sexuality. The specifics differ, but the underlying pattern is the same: people in authority trying to control which ideas are available to the public.

What Banning Accomplishes (and What It Doesn’t)

Here’s the thing about banning books: it doesn’t work. Or rather, it doesn’t accomplish what the banners intend. It often accomplishes the opposite. When a book is banned or challenged, sales typically increase. Media coverage follows. People who might never have heard of the book become curious about why someone wants it suppressed. The Streisand Effect, the phenomenon where trying to suppress information makes it more widely known, applies with particular force to books.

But there’s a more insidious way that book banning does work, and it’s worth acknowledging. When a book is removed from a school library, the students who would have discovered it there may never encounter it. They won’t seek it out at a bookstore or public library because they don’t know it exists. The ban doesn’t prevent people who are already interested in the book from finding it. It prevents people who haven’t yet discovered it from having the opportunity. This is the real damage: not the suppression of known information, but the prevention of accidental discovery.

Some of the most important reading experiences of my life happened because I stumbled across a book I wasn’t looking for. I pulled it off a library shelf because the title caught my eye, or a teacher assigned it, or it was sitting on a table in a bookstore. If someone had decided that book was too dangerous for me to encounter, I would have missed something that shaped how I think. That’s what book banning takes away: the serendipity of unexpected encounter.

At ScrollWorks Media, we believe that publishing exists to put ideas into the world, not to protect people from them. Every book on our list, from literary fiction like Still Waters to practical nonfiction like Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners, represents our commitment to the idea that readers are smart enough to decide for themselves what to read and what to think about it.