“Tropic of Cancer” Ruled Not Obscene
The Supreme Court ruled on this day that Henry Miller’s famous novel Tropic of Cancer was not obscene.
Published in Paris in 1934, the novel was not published in the U.S. for over twenty-five years. U.S. Customs had barred it from being imported. The main cause of the ban was Miller’s use of the word “fuck” throughout the novel. The ban was finally broken in 1961 when Grove Press, run by Barney Rosset, decided to publish the book. The Supreme Court case was Grove Press v. Gerstein, in which the Court gave a brief per curium decision citing Jacobellis v. Ohio, also decided on this day.
A fierce opponent of censorship, Barney Rosset faced over 60 prosecutions around the country over the Tropic of Cancer, and also challenged censorship of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and other controversial works. He died on February 21, 2012.
Learn more about Henry Miller at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California: http://www.henrymiller.org/henry-miller/
Even better, read Tropic of Cancer: Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Read Barney Rosset’s autobiography: Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship (2016)
Learn more about the myths and facts about pornography: Marcia Pally, Sense and Censorship: The Vanity of the Bonfires (1991), http://mediacoalition.org/files/Sense-and-Censorship.pdf
Learn more about the anti-censorship campaign in the 1950s and 1960s: Charles Rembar, The End of Obscenity: The Trials of Lady Chatterley, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill (1968)
Watch an interview with publisher Barney Rosset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdweTspU_7A
Find out about Banned Books Week: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/