Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature

Reference Type Book
Year of Publication
2014
Author
Author: Robert Darnton
Language
English
Number of Pages
316 pp.
Publisher
W.W Norton & Company
City
New York, NY
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Region
Asia
Europe
Chronological Period
1800-1849
1850-1899
18th century
1900-1949
1950-1999
ISBN
9780393242294
Annotation

Examines three eras of state censorship; eighteenth-century France, 19th century British Raj, and 20th century Communist East Germany. 

Contents: 

  • Bourbon France : privilege and repression
  • Typography and legality
  • The censor's point of view
  • Everyday operations
  • Problem cases
  • Scandal and enlightenment
  • The book police
  • An author in the servants' quarters
  • A distribution system, capillaries and arteries
  • British India : liberalism and imperialism
  • Amateur ethnography
  • Melodrama
  • Surveillance
  • Sedition?
  • Repression
  • Courtroom hermeneutics
  • Wandering minstrels
  • The basic contradiction
  • Communist East Germany : planning and persecution
  • Native informants
  • Inside the archives
  • Relations with authors
  • Author-editor negotiations
  • Hard knocks
  • A play : the show must not go on
  • A novel : publish and pulp
  • How censorship ended