785 Dirty Words

Every one of the books in this long list has been censored, most of them repeatedly. Parents, teachers, librarians, school boards, and booksellers have found themselves and their sensibilities challenged by the words between these covers. Even in this lineup, Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger's epic coming-of-age story from the 1950s, stands out as one of the most censored books of all time. Condemned for qualities that "promote perversion," this book has been proclaimed "immoral," "anti-white," "rebellious," and "profane." One parent counted 785 "dirty words" and proclaimed the book to be "Communist." As you look at these familiar titles, consider whether you find them all to be suitable for yourself, your children, or your grandmother. In many challenges, those objecting to the material haven't read more than a few passages. Can literature be fairly judged if it is not treated as a whole work? Or, are there some words and ideas that are simply too dangerous or offensive to be read?

 

Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

 

69 titles from "785 Dirty Words"

 

The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha - Cervantes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - A. Conan Doyle Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser Animal Farm - George Orwell Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank Arabian Nights As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin The Awakening - Kate Chopin The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver Black Boy - Richard Wright Book of Common Prayer - Church of England Camille - Alexandre Dumas Candide - Voltaire Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer Catch-22 - Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean Auel The Color Purple - Alice Walker Deer Park - Norman Mailer Deliverance - James Dickey Doctor Zhivago - Boris Lionidovich Pasternak Dracula - Bram Stoker Droll Stories - Balzac Dubliners - James Joyce Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell Go Tell It On the Mountain - James Baldwin The Group - Mary McCarthy Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

Hamlet - Shakespeare Howl, and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy The Jungle - Upton Sinclair The Koran A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert Les Miserables - Victor Hugo My House - Nikki Giovanni Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs Never Love a Stranger - Harolds Robbins Nineteen eighty-four - George Orwell Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey Ordinary People - Judith Guest The Ox-Bow Incident - Walter Van Tilburg Clark The Prince - Machiavelli Rabbit, Run - John Updike The Red Pony - John Steinbeck The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne A Separate Peace - John Knowles Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut Soul on Ice - Eldridge Cleaver Strange Fruit - Lillian Eugenia Smith A Summary View of the Rights of British America - Thomas Jefferson Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell Voyages to the Moon and the Sun - Cyrano de Bergerac Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence

 

 

 

 

 

 

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