1852
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Banned across the American South on publication — in several slave states, merely possessing a copy was a criminal offence.
Removed From Circulation
A poster series about the books they tried to take away. Each print is a library card stamped BANNED — and underneath the stamp, the borrowing carries on anyway, written in by hand, for years afterwards. Because it always does.
Every date and fact below is documented — a real removal, burning, prosecution or ban, not a challenge that fizzled. The same fact is printed on each card.
See the series on Etsy →1857
Madame Bovary
Prosecuted in Paris for “offence against public morals” within months of serialization. Flaubert was acquitted that February — and the scandal made the book.
1882
Leaves of Grass
The Boston district attorney declared it obscene and forced it out of print. Whitman refused to cut a single poem.
1899
The Awakening
Pulled from St. Louis library shelves for its portrait of a woman who wants more than her marriage. The reception ended Chopin’s career.
1921
Ulysses
The editors of The Little Review were convicted of obscenity for serializing it, and the US banned the book outright until Judge Woolsey’s ruling in 1933.
1928
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Banned on both sides of the Atlantic for three decades; cleared in Britain only by the 1960 Penguin obscenity trial.
1932
Brave New World
Banned in Ireland the year it was published, condemned as anti-family and anti-religion.
1939
The Grapes of Wrath
The public library in East St. Louis, Illinois burned its copies, and Kern County, California — where the novel is set — banned it from libraries and schools.
1949
1984
Banned in the Soviet Union on publication as ideologically dangerous. It was not legal to read there until 1990.
1960
The Catcher in the Rye
A Tulsa teacher was fired for assigning it, and the book went too — the start of decades as the most-challenged title in American schools.
1973
Slaughterhouse-Five
The school board of Drake, North Dakota burned 32 copies in the school furnace.
1983
Of Mice and Men
Banned from Skyline High School by the Scottsboro, Alabama board over its language — one entry in a career of removals.
1986
The Color Purple
Taken off the open shelves in Newport News, Virginia and kept behind the desk, for readers over eighteen only.
1993
The Handmaid’s Tale
Challenged in Judson, Texas as sexually explicit and anti-Christian. Removals of this one continue today.
1995
Beloved
Challenged in Missouri for its violence — and still being pulled from reading lists thirty years on.
1995
To Kill a Mockingbird
Pulled from the Southwood High School library in Caddo Parish, Louisiana over its racial language.
Sixteen cards, one reflex
From a criminal offence in 1852 to a school-board vote in 1995, the stamp is always the same. The books outlasted every one of them — which is the whole point of hanging one on a wall.
Available as prints
Each card in the series is available as a museum-grade giclée print or an instant digital download, in sizes from 8×10 to 24×36.
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