I had a lot of fun trashing this book with Cian from Wide Atlantic Weird podcast. Wheatley was a reactionary old racist who sold millions of books over a 40 year career. His influence on popular culture is probably underestimated. Partly thanks to him, naked women, candles and goat heads are visual short-hand for Satanism.
Here’s the episode list which ranges from the bizarre to the historically weighty. And yes, the censors were still banning in 1992.
Madonna, Sex (1992): banned after it sold out…
Anon, The Lustful Turk (1828): proper porn with a lot of racist tropes.
Margaret Mead, Growing up in Samoa (1928): scholarly but smutty.
Denis Wheatley, To the Devil, a Daughter (1953): time for more Satanism!
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness (1928): a queer text whose author scandalized London.
Thorne Smith, The Passionate Witch (1941): phallocentric fluffy smut.
Kate O’Brien, The Land of Spices (1941): a remarkably beautiful book offering powerful critiques of nationalism and religion in Ireland
John McGahern, Deep Dive Part One: The Dark (1965) : a book that reformed the censorship law deserves proper scrutiny.
John McGahern, Deep Dive Part Two: The Dark (1965)
The Irish language episode: still thinking about which book…
BONUS Joyce, ‘Ulysses’ (1922): banned almost everywhere *except* Ireland
