• Analysis
Banned Books Ireland Kept Hidden for Decades Move to National Archives
Ireland's collection of banned books, 12,000 titles deemed indecent or obscene by the Censorship of Publications Board and long stored in a closed room at the department of justice on St Stephen's Green, Dublin, is to be moved to the National Archives as the country repeals its censorship laws.
A Room No One Could Enter
For decades the department of justice on St Stephen's Green, Dublin, kept a room closed to the public, its shelves holding 12,000 books judged indecent or obscene by the Censorship of Publications Board. The collection, assembled since 1926, spans pulp fiction, high-brow literature and academic texts.
The names on the banned list reach across twentieth-century writing:
- •Harold Robbins, Ian Fleming, Edna O'Brien and Brendan Behan
- •Oscar Wilde, DH Lawrence, JD Salinger and John Updike
- •Iris Murdoch and F Scott Fitzgerald
Among the condemned titles were Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Behan's Borstal Boy and Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Alongside them sat paperbacks such as The Baby Doll Murders, A Doctor and his Mistress and Torrid Tale of a Wicked Town, and scholarly works including Sexual Life in England Past and Present and The Collected Works of Pierre Louÿs.
How the Bans Worked
The system began in 1926, when the Irish Free State set up the Committee of Evil Literature, a five-man panel tasked with protecting public morals. It recommended a vetting arrangement that produced the Censorship of Publications Board and an appeals board. The board itself was, for a time, led by a Catholic priest.
Material reached the censors in several ways. Members of the public and customs and revenue officers submitted works, and the censors also sourced books through a subscription to the Times Book Club.
The Censors' Reasons
Orlaith McBride, director of the National Archives, said censors prohibited works seen as subverting public morality, and that it was often just the innuendo of something that could have been perceived as likely to corrupt or deprave.
"References to family planning, contraception and violence were likely to elicit bans," said McBride.
Even a jacket design could condemn a book. McBride said the cover of Edna O'Brien's 1960 novel The Country Girls, showing the contours of the female form, contributed to its banning: the issue was not just the contents but the image.
Repeal and Public Access
As Ireland repeals its censorship laws, the entire collection is to be moved after Christmas from the department of justice, home affairs and migration to the National Archives, where the books will be conserved, catalogued and stored. The censors' registers, notes and letters from the public and interest groups were transferred this week and are undergoing conservation in advance of becoming publicly available. Those papers, which explain why each book was banned, will be made publicly available for the first time.
McBride said the registers and notes are the most interesting because they record the decisions and reveal the thinking behind the bans.
Not every volume will be on view. McBride said many are first editions which, because of their age, are in a vulnerable state and will not be available to the public, who can instead find the titles online and in bookshops. Brian Hughes, a history lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, said people would be surprised seeing and reading some of these books, noting that attitudes to sex and sexuality have changed in a more liberal, secular society.
