6. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller (1934)
Widely recognised as a milestone in literary censorship enforcement, many people believe it is thanks to Henry Miller's book about a struggling writer in Paris that we have freedom of literary speech today. The book was published in France 1934 and instantly, the US authorities put a ban upon its import. Smugglers were prosecuted until 1950 when the San Francisco branch head of the ACLU - Ernest Besig - tried to import a copy of Tropic of Cancer. Customs seized his book and Besig sued them. For the trial Besig assembled 19 literary figures to ascertain that the book had artistic content. This motion was thrown out and Tropic of Cancer was banned. An appeal by Besig failed - the book was still considered obscene. In 1961 Grove Press printed the book. Over 60 obscenity charges were made in 21 different states of the US against booksellers who sold Tropic of Cancer. The legal outcomes were varied. Some judges thought it had artistic merit but the majority were against it. The publisher launched a legal campaigns to help the bookstores in trouble and managed to get a couple of obscenity charges overturned. However, in 1964 before the Supreme Court, the ruling that Tropic of Cancer was obscene was officially squashed by the judges. The book also had a tortuous censorship history in both Canada and Britain. In particular, in the UK, the police thought of banning Tropic of Cancer in the 1960s, but they thought better of it after T S Eliot and writers of his prominence were willing to go public to defend the book.