BANNED BOOKS - SHOULD THE BOOKS BE BANNED? WHY BAN BOOKS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Conclusion: "You thought, this book cannot be banned, it was. Check this out"

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html

(The Salmander has collected excerpts from the article, that is worthy of being commented, elese a lot of information that may or may not be appropiate. Books, should never be banned? Should they be banned? You can comment to express your opinion).

" The Bible and The Koran were both removed from numerous libraries and banned from import in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1956. Many editions of the Bible have also been banned and burned by civil and religious authorities throughout history. Some recent examples: On July 1, 1996, Singapore convicted a woman for possessing the Jehovah's Witness translation of the Bible. A 2000 US government report reported that Burma (also known as Myanmar) bans all Bible translations into local indigenous languages. (The military dictatorship of that country also required modems to be licensed, so residents of Burma, like NetNanny users, are not likely to see this page.) Distributing Bibles, along with other forms of proselytizing by non-Muslims, is also banned in Saudi Arabia, according to this State Department report. "

"The Savannah Morning News reported in November 1999 that a teacher at the Windsor Forest High School required seniors to obtain permission slips before they could read Hamlet, Macbeth, or King Lear. "

"In Mark Twain's lifetime, his books Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were excluded from the juvenile sections of the Brooklyn Public library (among other libraries), and banned from the library in Concord, MA, home of Henry Thoreau. In recent years, some high schools have dropped Huckleberry Finn from their reading lists, or have been sued by parents who want the book dropped."

"Many "classics" (and their authors) were regarded as scandalous when they were first published, but after the author was safely dead they were relegated to high school English classes and largely forgotten by most people. However, in 1978 the Anaheim (California) Union High School District woke up to the danger of George Eliot's Silas Marner and banned it. I would be gratified (and not at all surprised) if there was a sudden surge of interest in Eliot among Anaheim students afterwards. Also banned there, according to the Anaheim Secondary Teachers Assocation, and as reported in Dawn Soya's Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds, was Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, for its depiction of the behavior of Scarlett O'Hara and the freed slaves in the novel. (While Mitchell may no longer be living, though, her copyright lives on in the US, so Americans will have to read a print copy instead of the online version.)
John Locke's philosophical Essay Concerning Human Understanding was expressly forbidden to be taught at Oxford University in 1701. The French translation was also placed on the Index.
Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice was banned from classrooms in Midland, Michigan in 1980, due to its portrayal of the Jewish character Shylock. It has been similarly banned in the 1930s in schools in Buffalo and Manchester, NY"

"This exhibit only represents books that are available online. The best comprehensive review of censorship through history that I have seen online is The File Room exhibit, begun at the University of Illinois, particularly its literature section. (The exhibit originally dates from 1994, but has been updated since.)
The Beacon for Freedom of Expression, a project of the Norwegian Library Association, also has an extensive database on censored publications, as well as publications about censorship and freedom of expression.
PEN, an international group of writers, keeps track of censorship and oppression of writers worldwide. Their US and Canadian sites are good starting points for current information on censored writers."