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Title: Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control
Authors: Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis
Genre: non-fiction

As a consequence of realising that hey, interlibrary loans exist and are actually pretty cheap, I've been reading a book called Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control by Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis.

The book is a survey of the history of censorship of literature mainly in the UK and the US, presented through case studies of individual censored works, though many of the chapters discuss censorship of similar books more broadly. The oldest case is the censorship of the early English translations of the Bible; the newest the censorship of Chicanx literature in Arizona in the 2010s.

The book takes a broad view of censorship. It doesn't just deal with censorship by the state, but also other forms of censorship, such as self-censorship and the chilling effect that censorship exerts on the literary landscape as a whole.

I'm not going to talk about it in any great detail. It's really well-written -- very accessible to a lay reader, without feeling like it's been dumbed-down -- so go read it if the topic interests you.

( Some thoughts on censorship of literature based on this book )