Ulysses — James Joyce

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.