Censored books spanning 1926-96 contained themes ‘likely to corrupt or deprave’, or references to contraception or violence
For almost a century, an Irish government building in the heart of Dublin has hosted a secret sanctum: the banned books room.
The department of justice, on St Stephen’s Green, did not grant public access, because the shelves contained 12,000 books deemed indecent or obscene.
It was a graveyard for titles condemned by the Censorship of Publications Board, a guardian of public morals which guillotined anything that smelled of sex or other corruptions.
Harold Robbins was interred. So too Ian Fleming, Edna O’Brien, Brendan Behan, Oscar Wilde, DH Lawrence, JD Salinger, John Updike, Iris Murdoch, F Scott Fitzgerald and many more.
Exhumation, however, is nigh. The entire collection is to be moved to the National Archives as part of the repeal of Ireland’s censorship laws. The censors’ notes, minutes and ledgers that detail why each book was banned will be made publicly available for the first time – a trove for researchers of social history and state control.
“The censors prohibited works that they saw as contravening or subverting public morality – anything that was seen as unwholesome or suggestive of sexual immorality,” said Orlaith McBride, the director of the National Archives.
