Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951.
From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.
Every one of the books in this long list has been censored, most of them repeatedly. Parents, teachers, librarians, school boards, and booksellers have found themselves and their sensibilities challenged by the words between these covers. Even in this lineup, Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger's epic coming-of-age story from the 1950s, stands out as one of the most censored books of all time. Condemned for qualities that "promote perversion," this book has been proclaimed "immoral," "anti-white," "rebellious," and "profane." One parent counted 785 "dirty words" and proclaimed the book to be "Communist." As you look at these familiar titles, consider whether you find them all to be suitable for yourself, your children, or your grandmother. In many challenges, those objecting to the material haven't read more than a few passages. Can literature be fairly judged if it is not treated as a whole work? Or, are there some words and ideas that are simply too dangerous or offensive to be read?
- The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha - Cervantes
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - A. Conan Doyle
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
- Arabian Nights
- As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin
- The Awakening - Kate Chopin
- The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
- Black Boy - Richard Wright
- Book of Common Prayer - Church of England
- Camille - Alexandre Dumas
- Candide - Voltaire
- Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
- Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
- Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
- Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean Auel
- The Color Purple - Alice Walker
- Deer Park - Norman Mailer
- Deliverance - James Dickey
- Doctor Zhivago - Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
- Dracula - Bram Stoker
- Droll Stories - Balzac
- Dubliners - James Joyce
- Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis
- The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
- Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
- Go Tell It On the Mountain - James Baldwin
- The Group - Mary McCarthy
- Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
- Hamlet - Shakespeare
- Howl, and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg
- Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
- Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
- The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
- The Koran
- A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines
- Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
- My House - Nikki Giovanni
- Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
- Never Love a Stranger - Harolds Robbins
- Nineteen eighty-four - George Orwell
- Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
- Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
- Ordinary People - Judith Guest
- The Ox-Bow Incident - Walter Van Tilburg Clark
- The Prince - Machiavelli
- Rabbit, Run - John Updike
- The Red Pony - John Steinbeck
- The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
- The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
- A Separate Peace - John Knowles
- Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
- Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
- Soul on Ice - Eldridge Cleaver
- Strange Fruit - Lillian Eugenia Smith
- A Summary View of the Rights of British America - Thomas Jefferson
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
- A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley
- Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell
- Voyages to the Moon and the Sun - Cyrano de Bergerac
- Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence