Bell Library Banned Books Week/Open House 2017: Banned Classics

Each year, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms. According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts. The titles included in the link represent banned or challenged books on that list.

A few titles from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th century list have been banned or challenged. Learn more about the whys and wheres.

In honor of Banned Books Week, we’ve compiled a list of popular classics that have been banned in the US at some time in history. While some of the novels presented here have been banned for a multiple reasons, we’ve listed them according to the most common one. Publishers’ descriptions included.

Experiments conducted by the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Research into Reading, Literature and Society (CRILS) have found that literary reading could help increase mental flexibility.

The works of Shakespeare and Wordsworth are “rocket-boosters” to the brain and better therapy than self-help books, researchers will say this week.