Top 10 Most Banned and Challenged Books in History

J.D. Salinger's coming-of-age novel has been the most challenged book in American high schools for decades, objected to for profanity, sexual content, and anti-establishment attitudes. It was famously found in the possession of both the person who shot John Lennon and the person who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, leading to occasional (baseless) claims that the book incites violence.

Mark Twain's novel, first banned in 1885 immediately upon publication by a Massachusetts library committee as "trash suitable only for the slums," remains among the most challenged books in American schools due to its extensive use of the N-word. The book's deep anti-racism — its depiction of Huck's moral growth in recognising the humanity of the enslaved Jim — makes the controversy particularly complex and instructive.

James Joyce's Ulysses was banned in the United States from 1922 to 1933 for obscenity, declared by a New York court to be "smut" following its serialisation in The Little Review. Judge John M. Woolsey's landmark 1933 ruling reversing the ban — finding that the novel's frank depictions of sexuality arose from artistic intention rather than pornographic purpose — established a legal precedent for literary obscenity cases that shaped publishing for decades.

D.H. Lawrence's explicit novel about the love affair between an aristocratic woman and her gamekeeper was banned in Britain from 1928 to 1960. Penguin Books's 1960 decision to publish the unexpurgated text led to the most celebrated obscenity trial in British legal history, in which the prosecution's question — "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" — became an instant definition of establishment paternalism.

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988) led to book burnings in Bradford, a fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination issued by Ayatollah Khomeini (forcing Rushdie into hiding for nine years), the murder of the Japanese translator, serious injury of the Norwegian publisher, and assassination attempts on the Turkish publisher. In August 2022, Rushdie was stabbed on stage at a New York literary event, losing sight in one eye and the use of one hand.

Vladimir Nabokov's extraordinary novel narrated by a paedophile used the device of an utterly unreliable narrator to create one of literature's most challenging and technically dazzling works. Rejected by four American publishers, published by the Olympia Press in Paris (1955), banned in France, and finally published in America in 1958, where it immediately became a bestseller. Its prose is universally acknowledged as among the finest in English literature of the 20th century.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (1960) has been one of the most challenged books in American schools since the 1970s, objected to alternately for its racial content (offensive language) and for its frank treatment of rape. The paradox — a novel explicitly about racial injustice being challenged partly on racial grounds — illustrates the complexity of literary censorship debates around historical texts.

The Harry Potter series became the most challenged book series in American libraries in the first decade of the 21st century, with over 500 complaints to the American Library Association. The grounds: allegations of promoting witchcraft, the occult, and anti-Christian values. The series being the most widely read fiction of the 2000s while also being its most challenged illustrates how mainstream reading and book challenges operate simultaneously.

Anne Frank's Diary has been banned or challenged in various US school districts for sexual content — Frank's innocent explorations of puberty and her observations about her own body in a diary she wrote as a teenager hidden from the Nazis. That a Holocaust document of such moral weight should face banning in the United States for frank adolescent diary entries illustrates the often absurd specifics of literary censorship.

J.D. Salinger's coming-of-age novel has been the most challenged book in American high schools for decades, objected to for profanity, sexual content, and anti-establishment attitudes. It was famously found in the possession of both the person who shot John Lennon and the person who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, leading to occasional (baseless) claims that the book incites violence.

Mark Twain's novel, first banned in 1885 immediately upon publication by a Massachusetts library committee as "trash suitable only for the slums," remains among the most challenged books in American schools due to its extensive use of the N-word. The book's deep anti-racism — its depiction of Huck's moral growth in recognising the humanity of the enslaved Jim — makes the controversy particularly complex and instructive.

James Joyce's Ulysses was banned in the United States from 1922 to 1933 for obscenity, declared by a New York court to be "smut" following its serialisation in The Little Review. Judge John M. Woolsey's landmark 1933 ruling reversing the ban — finding that the novel's frank depictions of sexuality arose from artistic intention rather than pornographic purpose — established a legal precedent for literary obscenity cases that shaped publishing for decades.

D.H. Lawrence's explicit novel about the love affair between an aristocratic woman and her gamekeeper was banned in Britain from 1928 to 1960. Penguin Books's 1960 decision to publish the unexpurgated text led to the most celebrated obscenity trial in British legal history, in which the prosecution's question — "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" — became an instant definition of establishment paternalism.

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988) led to book burnings in Bradford, a fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination issued by Ayatollah Khomeini (forcing Rushdie into hiding for nine years), the murder of the Japanese translator, serious injury of the Norwegian publisher, and assassination attempts on the Turkish publisher. In August 2022, Rushdie was stabbed on stage at a New York literary event, losing sight in one eye and the use of one hand.

Vladimir Nabokov's extraordinary novel narrated by a paedophile used the device of an utterly unreliable narrator to create one of literature's most challenging and technically dazzling works. Rejected by four American publishers, published by the Olympia Press in Paris (1955), banned in France, and finally published in America in 1958, where it immediately became a bestseller. Its prose is universally acknowledged as among the finest in English literature of the 20th century.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (1960) has been one of the most challenged books in American schools since the 1970s, objected to alternately for its racial content (offensive language) and for its frank treatment of rape. The paradox — a novel explicitly about racial injustice being challenged partly on racial grounds — illustrates the complexity of literary censorship debates around historical texts.

The Harry Potter series became the most challenged book series in American libraries in the first decade of the 21st century, with over 500 complaints to the American Library Association. The grounds: allegations of promoting witchcraft, the occult, and anti-Christian values. The series being the most widely read fiction of the 2000s while also being its most challenged illustrates how mainstream reading and book challenges operate simultaneously.

Anne Frank's Diary has been banned or challenged in various US school districts for sexual content — Frank's innocent explorations of puberty and her observations about her own body in a diary she wrote as a teenager hidden from the Nazis. That a Holocaust document of such moral weight should face banning in the United States for frank adolescent diary entries illustrates the often absurd specifics of literary censorship.