Tag Archive: 0banned books

This week is Banned Books Week.  I’ve written about banned books before: the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in the Weimar Republic, in the Soviet Union.  Here’s something a little earlier: the libellous Philippiques of François-Joseph de Lagrange-Chancel (1677–1758).  These virulent satires against the Regent, the duc d’Orléans, enjoyed a huge popularity in manuscript throughout the […]

This is the infamous Polunbi-Katalog, the so-called ‘bible’ of the German Central Police Bureau for Combating Obscene Pictures, Books and Advertisements (Deutsche ZentralPOLizeistelle zur Bekämpfung UNzüchtiger BIlder, Schriften und Inserate, or Polunbi) in 1920s Berlin.  The catalogue not only records what was confiscated, arranged alphabetically by title, but whether a book was withdrawn from circulation […]

Umberto Eco’s latest novel, The Prague Cemetery, sees its main character write an anti-Semitic book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  The novel may be fiction, but the Protocols really did, and still does, exist.  The book, first published in 1905 and much reprinted, also circulated in manuscript, although only one early handwritten copy is […]