Banning antique erotica was a strange feature of the late censorship regime. Full of whipping and racism, this was not a book I enjoyed even if its history was fascinating.
S6 E2 Bottom wriggling: Anon ‘The memoirs of Dolly Morton’ (1899)
S5 E4 Girls, girls: Mead ‘Growing up in Samoa’ (1928)
This short popular anthropology book made Margaret Mead into a prominent public intellectual. It’s full of radical ideas about family formation, gender roles and sexual expression. Written by a woman who believed in polygamy, it’s a wonder it took nearly 20 years for the Irish censors to ban it.
S5 E2 Phallic: Flynn, ‘My Wicked, Wicked Ways’ (1959)
Errol Flynn was extremely hot in his day but you might not see his beautiful face in the same way after reading his memoir. A scandalous take on Golden Age Hollywood, it was too salacious for the Irish market.
S4 BONUS Fecundshite: Joyce ‘Ulysses’ (1922)
James Joyce went way beyond smut when he wrote Ulysses, an epic modernist masterpiece. The censorship history of Ulysses is as mind boggling as the author’s bloody-minded determination to offend. In a bizarre twist, this filthy book was never banned in Ireland.
S4 E8 The McGahern Affair Part 1, the Book
When The Dark was banned in 1965, John McGahern became the focus of a censorship controversy. But what about this coming-of-age novel irked the censors?
S4 E7 Sexual inversion: Hall ‘The Well of Loneliness’ (1928)
Hall’s queer text was at the centre of a moral panic and censorship show trial in England. Why did the Irish censor ban it, when an English prohibition meant Irish booksellers couldn’t source the book?
S4 E3 Hex & Sex: Smith ‘The Passionate Witch’ (1942)
Only a truly paranoid censor would ban a book this innocuous. But even barely there smut can give convent-school girls ideas…
