(Roughly) Daily

Prohibited prose has been a continuing theme here at (R)D:  c.f., e.g., “And the ban played on…,” “Fahrenheit 451…,” “Got you covered…,” “If we do not meet with agreeable things, we shall at least meet with something new…,” et. al.

Well it’s that time again; it’s National Banned Books Week.  What better time to dip into a taboo title?

Lord knows, the options are plentiful:  Darwin’s Origin of the Species, Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Obedience, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland…  Indeed, 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.  (See the American Library Association’s list of Challenged Classics here.)  For an even longer (and older) list, consult the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books), the list of publications prohibited by the Catholic Church (from 1557 until the practice was halted in 1966).

Many, many of them are available via Project Gutenberg and/or as free downloads through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, et al.

Ladies and Gentlemen, to your easy chairs!

As we turn the page, we might recall that it was on this date in 1892 that Joshua Pusey patented the “flexible match”; he then sold his patent to the Diamond Match Trust (which he joined, as patent attorney)– and his design became the first mass-produced paper matchbook.

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