One of Ogden Nash's copies of 'Hard Lines' with padlock and chain. Photo by Pete Smith.

“All of these books are worse than opium… I would rather have a child of mine use opium than read these books,” declared Senator Reed Smoot of Utah in March 1930, speaking from behind a desk towering with “smutty” books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Robert Burns’s poetry.

In 1929, Senator Smoot and Representative Willis Hawley of Oregon introduced a tariff bill to Congress that included a section restricting the importation of obscene materials, which inspired the widely repeated news headline “Smoot Smites Smut.” Senator Bronson Cutting of New Mexico led a protest against the proposed ban on obscene literature, and the House approved an amendment that…

Photo of Mary Ware Dennett from New York Journal American collection.

In 1919 Mary Ware Dennett (1872–1947) published The Sex Side of Life, a sex-education pamphlet for young people that she originally wrote for her sons. The U.S. Post Office declared the pamphlet obscene in April 1922, and Dennett struggled on her own to get the ruling reversed, all the while continuing to distribute The Sex Side of Life through the mail.

In 1928, in consultation with attorney Morris Ernst, Dennett agreed that it was time to test The Sex Side of Life in court.  The trial came sooner than anticipated when the Justice Department indicted Dennett for mailing the pamphlet to “Mrs. Carl A. Miles” in Virginia. A jury convicted Dennett of distributing…

Each Friday, the Ransom Center shares photos from throughout the week that highlight a range of activities and collection holdings. We hope you enjoy these photos that reveal some of the everyday happenings at the Center.

University of Texas alumnus Kevin Kautzman portrays John Sumner in 'Censorship Then and Now.' Students in Kathryn Dawson’s 'Applications in Museum Settings' class at The University of Texas at Austin studied performance as a way to bring museum exhibitions to life, including creating characters based on the Center’s exhibition 'Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored.' Photo by Pete Smith.

University of Texas at Austin undergraduate student Rachel Panella argues her point as Upton Sinclair in 'Censorship Then and Now,' a performance for area high school students. Photo…

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The Ransom Center’s current exhibition Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored reveals the rarely seen “machinery” of censorship in the United States between the two world wars.  See the Center’s recommended reading list of historically banned books, and visit the exhibition to learn more about these and many other books caught up in the complex world of American censorship. See which book was considered so obscene prosecutors “assiduously avoided using its title in public discussions of the case.”

This 1942 poster reminded Americans of the widespread 1933 Nazi book burnings and presented books as playing a fundamental role in the fight against tyranny.

On May 10, 1933, a series of coordinated book burnings took place across Germany. In the academic sphere, the German Students Association’s staged burnings were an attempt to eliminate “un-German” works from university libraries. Addressing the students gathered in Berlin, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels encouraged them to “clean up the debris of the past.” Ultimately more than 25,000 books were burned, including works by Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, and Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, and Helen Keller.

The 1933 Nazi-sponsored book burnings in Germany prompted a swift and very public response in the United…

Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' (1934) was banned in the United States for 30 years. Photo by Anthony Maddaloni.

Upon its publication in 1934, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer was deemed obscene by the United States Customs Department and was not legally available in the United States. Editions like this one, published in Japan, were smuggled into the U.S. to satisfy demand. Miller had been seeking an American publisher since 1934 and had hoped to defend Tropic of Cancer in court as early as 1936. Local district attorneys, however, were not persuaded, and over 50 cases against the novel were brought to various state and local courts. The ban on Miller’s work was finally lifted in 1964 after a Florida case…

Each Friday, the Ransom Center shares photos from throughout the week that highlight a range of activities and collection holdings. We hope you enjoy these photos that reveal some of the everyday happenings at the Center.

Guests at the “Uncensored” opening party sign a mock Greenwich Village Bookshop Door. Photo by Pete Smith.

Sanctuary Printshop creates souvenir screen printed T-shirts and totebags at the “Uncensored” opening. Photo by Pete Smith.

Guests at the “Uncensored” opening party sport “censoring” sunglasses in conjunction with the "Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored" exhibition. Photo by Pete Smith.

A student visits the "Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored" exhibition. Photo by Pete Smith.

David Garza, Superintendent for Flynn Construction, oversees the installation of the air handler for the new acetate film…

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Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

The two exhibitions The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925 and Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored are now open at the Ransom Center. In the slideshow above, staff members install the bookshop door in the galleries on Friday.

The Greenwich Village bookshop door is positioned in a sliding track before being moved between the two panels of Plexiglas. Photo by Alicia Dietrich.