ABSTRACT
First published in 1992, Writing and Censorship in Britain explores the issue of censorship, from a range of cultural and literary perspectives, from the Tudor period to the 1990s. Written by some of the leading experts in the field, this collection charts the struggles for artistic expression, reveals how censorship is appropriated as a legitimate tactic in the defence of oppressed and marginalised groups, and analyses the struggles writers have employed in the face of its complex dynamics. Here variously defined, defended and deplored, censorship emerges as both an unstable and a potent concept. Through it we define ourselves: as readers, as writers and as citizens. This book will be of interest to students of literature, history and law.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|36 pages
Tudors and Stuarts: castration and control
chapter Chapter 3|10 pages
‘Those who else would turn all upside-down’: censorship and the assize sermon, 1660–1720
chapter Chapter 4|11 pages
‘All run now into Politicks’: theatre censorship during the Exclusion crisis, 1679–81
part II|66 pages
The eighteenth century: liberty and licence
chapter Chapter 7|16 pages
‘An old tragedy on a disgusting subject’: Horace Walpole and The Mysterious Mother
chapter Chapter 8|16 pages
‘The memory of the liberty of the press’: the suppression of radical writing in the 1790s
part III|59 pages
The Victorian period: responsibility and repression
chapter Chapter 9|16 pages
A land of relative freedom: censorship of the press and the arts in the nineteenth century (1815–1914)
chapter Chapter 10|13 pages
Blasphemy, obscenity and the courts: contours of tolerance in nineteenth-century England
chapter Chapter 11|17 pages
Victorian obscenity law: negative censorship or positive administration? 1
chapter Chapter 12|11 pages
‘The physiological facts’: Thomas Hardy, censorship and narrative breakdown
part IV|76 pages
The twentieth century: radicals and readers