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BOOK LIST:

20 Banned & Challenged Classics

Updated: August 29, 2017

This list include Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. For a complete list, and for more information on why these books were challenged, visit challenged classics and the Banned Books Week website.

For more information and resources on banned/challenged books, go to lapl.org/banned.


Book cover for 1984
1984
Orwell, George, 1903-1950.
Call Number: Ed.k

One of the twentieth century's great classic dystopian novels depicting superstates that rule by torture, brainwashing, starvation, and absolute fear.


Book cover for As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William, 1897-1962.
Call Number: Ed.d

Book cover for Beloved
Beloved
Morrison, Toni.
Call Number: YA

Book cover for Brave New World
Brave New World
Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963.
Call Number: Ed.g

One of the twentieth century's great classic dystopian novels which portrays mass manipulation of people through propaganda and indoctrination.


Book cover for The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
London, Jack, 1876-1916.

Catch 22 cover
Catch-22
Heller, Joseph.
Call Number: Ed.g

The novel came first, then the phrase. During World War II, the story involves Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier who flies a B-25 for the U.S. Army. The setting is on the fictional Pianosa Island west of Italy. 

 

Book cover for The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye
Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-2010.
Call Number: Ed.d

Book cover for A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
Burgess, Anthony, 1917-1993.
Call Number: Ed.h

Book cover for The Color Purple
The Color Purple
Walker, Alice, 1944-
Call Number: Ed.c

Book cover for A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms
Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961.
Call Number: Ed.g

Set within the context of World War I, the love story of Lieutenant Henry and nurse Catherine Barkley is thwarted by bad luck and bad timing.


Book cover for Gone With the Wind
Gone With the Wind
Mitchell, Margaret, 1900-1949.
Call Number: Ed.l

This epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time. Its vivid depiction of the American South during the Civil War created characters still part of conversation today.


Book cover for The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.
Call Number: Ed.o

Book cover for The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940.
Call Number: Ed.j

F. Scott Fitzgerald's portrait of the Jazz Age in all its decadence and excess, is, as editor Maxwell Perkins praised it in 1924, "a wonder." It remains one of the most widely read, translated, admired, imitated and studied twentieth-century works of American fiction. This deceptively simple work, Fitzgerald's best known, was hailed by critics as capturing the spirit of the generation. In Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald embodies some of America's strongest obsessions: wealth, power, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. The recording includes a selection of letters written by Fitzgerald to his editor, Maxwell Perkins, his agent, Harold Ober, and friends and associates, including Willa Cather, H.L. Mencken, John Peale Bishop and Gertrude Stein.


Book cover for Lolita
Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Call Number: Ed.e

Book cover for The Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Flies
Golding, William, 1911-1993.
Call Number: Ed.h

Book cover for The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973.
Call Number: Ed.e

Book cover for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Kesey, Ken.
Call Number: Ed.k

Book cover for To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lee, Harper.
Call Number: Ed.g

Maybe the most famous one book author, Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. It was an instant bestseller, winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was adapted into an Academy Award winning film in 1962. Since the publication of the book Lee has remained reclusive, neither publishing another book nor granting interviews. (As of 2015, Harper Lee is now known for two novels.)


Book cover for Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer
Miller, Henry, 1891-1980.

Book cover for Ulysses
Ulysses
Joyce, James
Call Number: Ed.q

2022 marked the 100th anniversary of the publication of this novel by James Joyce. Since its first publication it has been burned and banned. All of this was based on charges of obscenity.


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