Description of Incident: The play was initially supposed to be staged at Dumas Fils' fathers theater (his father was the famous novelist who wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo"). Because of political and economic uncertainties this collapsed and in mid-1850 Bouffe at the Vaudeville offered to stage the play. Under Napoleon theaters were subject to licensing which limited each theater to one genre and also to censorship. After the play was first submitted the censor Leon Faucher condemned the amoral behavior of the play in a report. A reworked version was rejected a few months later saying that the script did not appear to have been changed at all. Dumas had to wait until after the coup d'etat in 1951 for a new censor to be appointed and his play approved. When this new censor went on vacation his replacement reversed the decision and banned the play again. That only lasted a little while until the censor who had approved the play returned. In England French plays were frequently subject to censorship because the British objected to to France's "adventurous approach to personal relations". Verdi's opera based on the play "La Traviata" appeared in England in 1956 because it had slipped through during a change of censors in England. Even after the opera was shown the play was still not granted a license, but unlicensed performances were made in the provinces.

Results of Incident: Towards the end of the nineteenth century Dumas' play and the works of other French playwrights became acceptable in England.

Description of Incident: Dryden's "Amphitryon" angered many who said it undermined authorities and conventions. The play was bitterly attacked by Jeremy Collier in a pamphlet published in 1698 called "A Short View of the Immortality of the Stage". Collier was bothered by a couple of things in the play. The first was the characterization of Jupiter, which Collier took to be an attack on the Christian God. The second was the cynical view of love and morality. Despite the popularity of the play Collier's words had an effect and even Dryden himself admitted to being guilty of obscenity. In order to make the play suitable for a performance in 1756 the play was rewritten by John Hawkesworth. Hawkesworth made over 200 separate changes to the text, most of them on moral grounds. Even after this revision Hawkesworth said he still found the play in many ways offensive. About a hundred years later the play was again rewritten by John Oxenford to make it appropriate for the audiences of the time. Oxenford keeps Alcmena a virgin in the end and cuts out all mention of Hercules.

Results of Incident: The play remained largely unperformed in the twentieth century. A new version was written by the French playwright called "Amphitryon 38". This version also faced controversy. At the time all plays had to be licensed by Lord Chamberlain, the British theatrical censor. Many urged him not to grant the play a license but in the end he did, deciding that being a classical play it would only attract intellectuals and not do any widespread damage. It was licensed in the 1930s although it still underwent some alterations. More modern productions of the play double the roles of Amphitryon and Jupiter.

Description of Incident: The British colonial government in Nigeria was embarrassed and annoyed by the drumming which they saw as "unnecessary noise making". In 1917 three articles were written into the Township Ordinance to prohibit or restrict drumming. Those who broke these laws had to pay a fine of forty shillings. The local Yoruba chiefs also took steps to restrict drumming. Colonial rule had made these chiefs answerable to the colonial government and local drummers often used their music to criticize chiefs. The first chief to try and restrict drumming was the king of Ijebu-Igbo where drummers had organized an opposition movement. The king claimed the drumming was responsible for the spread of smallpox. The colonial government did not accept this excuse and refused to take action to restrict drumming. By the late 1930s the British were beginning to become fed up with the drumming and in 1938 a prohibition order for Buruntu and Forcados was passed because it was said the people there were drumming and singing through the night and disturbing inhabitants of other islands. In other tribes drumming was banned for fear of religious conflict--that drumming could be used by pagans to interrupt Christian worship. Despite these bans drummers persisted, even though they were frequently fined and jailed. In the late 1940s many places in Yorubaland had rescinded the bans except for some areas, where officials continued to instate bans. In 1952 a drumming ban was passed in Ogwashi-Uku "to prevent decline in morals among the young people of the town".

Results of Incident: Nigeria achieved independence in 1960 and at the celebrations drummers were paid to play their music.

Description of Incident: In the mid-1970s the Polish constitution was revised, leading to protests from intellectuals. This led to the blacklisting of many Polish writers and many works were banned. Worker's riots and strikes helped in the forming of an underground information network. One of the first publications produced from this network was "Zapis" (Recorded Work) which was published in Britain and then smuggled in to Poland. Poland's leading writers contributed and helped found the publication. In 1977 another literary journal was published in the underground called "Puls". This publication sought to unify writers. Martial law was declared in 1981 and many of the second circulation works were confiscated, including many copies of "Zapis". The government failed to totally eradicate the underground publishing network however. In 1985 they introduced new laws to punish printers and distributors of illegal materials.

Results of Incident: In 1988 the publications of second circulation were widely available, especially on college campuses. Finally in 1989 after round table talks independent publishers were allowed to take part in the Warsaw International Book Fair.

Description of Incident: "Sister Carrie" was withdrawn and edited after complaints about the lack of morality. In 1916 "The Genius" (which was not a success critically) was brought to the attention of John Sumner, the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It was then banned for being blasphemous and obscene. Before that it had been withdrawn from bookshops in Cincinnati after a complaint from the Western Society for the Prevention of Vice. Dreiser's publishers agreed to withdraw the book. The Author's League of America challenged the censorship, but lost after the court threw out the case because the publisher had voluntarily withdrawn the book. In 1921 Dreiser found a new publisher who agreed to stand up to censors. The new publication of "The Genius" went ahead unchallenged in 1923. In late 1925 Dreiser published his most successful novel, "An American Tragedy", and was threatened with legal action by the Boston district Attorney who was taking action against titles deemed to danger the "morals of youth". Dreiser's publisher convinced a bookseller in Boston to take a stand by selling the book. The bookseller was arrested and fined and the appeal was not heard for two years, until 1929. The appeal was unsuccessful but censorship of Dreiser's works died down. In 1931 "An American Tragedy" was being adapted for film by Paramount. Paramount translated the book into a tame love story and Dreiser sought legal action against the studio. Dreiser lost the case on the grounds that concerns for the audience trumped the concern of an individual author. In 1933 both "The Genius" and "An American Tragedy" were banned in Nazi Germany.

Results of Incident: Dreiser's battle against Paramount voiced a frustration that would become more common among authors who felt the film industry disregarded the author's intentions in favor of the consumer.

Description of Incident: Ding Ling became popular in the communist party for her propaganda work that won her the position of literary editor of the official party newspaper in Yan'an. In 1941 and 42 Mao called for a movement to eradicate bureaucratic tendencies. In response to this Ling wrote a couple of essays intended as constructive criticism of the party. The first one focuses on the lack of individuality allowed in communist society and the second one focuses on gender inequality. Mao and the Communist Party began a drive against Ding Ling. Ling was forced to attend daily ideological meetings. She then published a self-criticism, denouncing her own work. She was then removed from her position at the newspaper and forced to "study" in villages and factories. In a move to save her career she gave in to the party line and published a novel "Sun over the Sanggan River" that was awarded the Stalin Literary Prize. She was appointed to various official posts in the coming years. Her rivalry with other writers led to her being the focus of the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign. Ling's optimism about the literary scene at the time led to her reiterating her old belief that literature should be guided by writers rather than party bureaucrats. In June of 1957 meetings were being convened daily to enumerate her crimes. In October the journal that she had been the editor of for a number of years asked that she acknowledge her mistakes. She refused to recant and was sent to jail and labor camps until the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Results of Incident: At the end of the Cultural Revolution she was sent to rehabilitation and Ling was so grateful for the treatment she received that she enthusiastically supported the views she had once been at odds with, even after Mao's death. This made her unpopular with other writers. Shortly before her death in 1986 Ding Ling became the editor of a literary journal which published experimental poetry and fiction.

Description of Incident: Blaga Dimitrova was, in her early career, highly recognized by the communist government. In the 1970s her works became more critical of the government and received criticism for not being politically correct. Four books of poetry Dimitrova wrote in the 1970s, "Fireflies Fading", "Rubber Plant", "Questions", and "Hobbyada", were all rejected by state publishing houses with no reason given. The first two volumes of her cultural history of 20th century Bulgaria were banned and the third was not published at all. In the 1980s she was prevented from publishing the poem "Waking for the Poplars", the collection of satires "Laming", and the science fiction novel "Urania". She was also asked to revise a number of her works. For one poem she was asked to change the setting to South Africa so that the poem would not seem critical of Bulgaria, and for another one she was asked to omit the date because it happened to be July 4. Dimitrova's work "Litse" (Face) in 1977 demonstrates the powers of the Bulgarian censors. "Face" is one of Dimitrova's best works. The book contains direct criticism of Bulgarian communist rule. The climax of the novel comes when the authorities order the main character to rewrite her biography 16 times and she realizes the meaning of self-censorship. "Face" was rejected by the first publisher and was only published through the help of other writers. An editorial team was then assigned to censor the novel and the chapter that included the climax of the novel was entirely cut out. Many words were changed so that there would not be any ambiguity. The novel was published in 1982 but the day it was released all of the 300,000 copies of the book were loaded in vans and taken to a special repository for banned books called the "book gaol". Most of the reviews of the book were critical, saying Dimitrova was serving foreign intelligence. Some positive reviews were published and an editor was fired for publishing one of them. Reading "Face" came to be a political statement.

Results of Incident: Bulgarian communism collapsed in 1989 and "Face" was restored to its original version and republished twice. Dimitrova became an active politician and vice president of Bulgaria from 1992-3 and continued to write about the shifting political situation in Bulgaria until her death in 2003.

Description of Incident: YouTube hosts user submitted videos. The video in question was submitted to the website and received rave reviews from subscribers. It was viewed close to 2,000 times in a one day period and was in the top-20 favorites for the day. An email was received from YouTube which said, "After being flagged by members of the YouTube community and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature." It should be noted that the video contained no nudity, no sexual content, and no harsh language. It is a video of a young lady playing with a balloon.

Results of Incident: No recourse or avenue of appeal was offered. No explanation was given for the decision. The video was simply removed from public view.

Description of Incident: In late 1931 the publishing business La Maison Aubert submitted "Gargantua" to the "depot legal" for publication and put it on display in the window of the shop. It was soon seized, along with other prints done by Daumier, by the Paris police. They ordered the owner of the publishing house to destroy the lithographic stone and all the remaining proofs. In February 1932 Daumier, the owner of the publishing house, and the printer, were all brought to trial for arousing hatred and contempt of the king's government, and for offending the king's person. In the trial the argument was over whether "Gargantua" represented the king personally or if it was a symbolic representation of the king's swollen budget. All three of the men were convicted, but only Daumier served a prison term.

Results of Incident: Daumier continued to produce political caricatures, even during his imprisonment and later when he was in a psychiatric clinic. In 1935 the September Laws were passed, which silenced oppositional press, and Daumier and most of his colleagues turned to social caricature.

Description of Incident: Darwin first began developing his theory of evolution during his exploratory voyage on the HMS Beagle. He returned from his voyage in 1936. His journal from his travels indicate that he was already developing his theory. Darwin had kept an entirely separate, clandestine journal in which he compiled his ideas on evolution. Even though he had already developed much of his theory by 1936, he waited for over 20 years, until 1959, to publish it. This self-censorship had many causes. First of all, Darwin felt his work was incomplete. He felt the need to win the approval of many of his colleagues in the scientific field (many of whom where also members of the clergy) and wanted to make sure when his work was published he could do so. Secondly, Darwin was aware of the fate met by other radical scientists in history such as Galileo and Copernicus. Thirdly, the thinking of the time was inclined to racism and the common belief was that the English people were biologically better than their colonial subjects. When his work was finally published in 1959 Darwin received both praise and the expected censorship. The first 1250 copes of "The Origin of Species" were over subscribed and many sung the work's praises. The book was immediately placed on the Catholic "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" and was strongly denounced by the bishop of Oxford. It is believed that Darwin was in line to be knighted but that the bishop of Oxford convinced the prime minister not to. "The Origin of Species" and its theories are still censored in many schools in the United States and in Islamic countries.

Results of Incident: Despite the controversy surrounding the work Darwin was admired at the end of his life. The king of Prussia awarded him the Pour Le Merite. When Darwin died he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where he lies beneath a monument to Isaac Newton.

Description of Incident: There were two factions fighting for control of Florence in the 13th century--the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Dante was born into a Guelph family and when the Guelphs took control he was elected to be one of the six governing priori. The Guelph party was also split between the "whites" and the "blacks". Dante was a "white," who was condemned as being hostile to the pope. On a visit to the pope, the blacks took control of the government and Dante was charged with corrupt use of public money. His sentence was to be burned, so he never returned to Florence. This is what caused Dante to write "De Monarchia". In 1328, six years after Dante's death, the book was condemned by cardinal Bertrando de Poggetto. The first censorship of "De Monarchia" was the burning of the book in 1318. Dante's work was also burned in the "bonfire of the vanities" in 1497. Fifty years after that "De Monarcgia" was placed on the Index of Paul IV and the Tridentine Index.

Results of Incident: Challenges to papal authority became more commonplace during the Reformation, but the Papal states would remain until Napoleon dismantled them in the early 19th century.

Description of Incident: "Deep Throat" was the target of more prosecutions than any film in the United States since "Birth of a Nation" in 1915. "Deep Throat" was judged as obscene in the case Sanders v. Georgia in 1975. A more famous case in 1976 took place in Memphis, Tennessee. The film was not being shown in Memphis but it was chosen as the place for the trail because of its conservative attitudes and an enthusiastic local prosecutor. Co-star Harry Reems became the first actor ever to be charged in a US court with obscenity. Eleven other defendants and five corporations were also charged. They were convicted after the judge had told the jury that the First Amendment did not apply.

Results of Incident: A new trial was granted by the appellate court and the federal government decided to drop the case. The controversy over the film continued after Linda Lovelace published two volumes of an autobiography in the 1980s. Her claims that she had been forced by her husband to do that movie and that he had raped and beaten her during the filming caused an uproar among feminists.

Description of Incident: E.E. Cummings, along with many other writers, went to World War I as an ambulance driver. In avoiding combat, Cummings hoped to avoid facing strict military discipline. This was not true, however, and he soon grew frustrated and angry with the military authority. Cummings soon became aware that his letters back home were being stopped. Cummings' close friend, William Slater Brown, wrote letters telling of the disillusionment on the front and the mutinies that occurred. This led to his arrest, and Cummings' shortly afterward. Both men faced horrible conditions during their internment, which Cummings describes them in "The Enormous Room".

Results of Incident: The book was much admired during this period of expose and honesty after the war.

Description of Incident: When "Crash" was released at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996 a review by Alexander Walker in The Evening Standard started the controversy over the movie. When news broke that the British Board of Film Classification was going to consider granting "Crash" a certificate and that the movie would be shown at the London Film Festival newspapers and Conservative MPs called for the banning of the film. The call for censorship was also part of an election year campaign to blame liberal forces for causing depravity and moral corruption in British society. After a series of studies and investigations the British Board of Film Classification deemed that the film was not illegal or harmful. In the United States the release of the film was delayed but it was released a few months later with an NC-17 rating.

Results of Incident: The film was shown in a limited number of theaters in the United States and Britain.

Description of Incident: As soon as the painting was exhibited it excited much controversy. The Salon was forced to accept the painting because in 1848 he had won a medal and was exempt from the selection process. The thin veil covering the bather's lower buttocks seems to be an attempt by Courbet at avoiding controversy, as it looks like it was painted on after. The painting was called "dirt" and condemned as being subversive. The bather was described as a piece of meat on a butcher block and the stark contrast between the lights and the darks in the painting gave his critics reason to call the painting sooty.

Results of Incident: Many of Courbet's paintings would be censored in years to come and a few were even destroyed.