A Long Time Burning

Book excerpt: Censorship of the written word has proved a constant source for debate and argument. To cut or not to cut is a question with a long and fascinating history. First published in 1969, A Long Time Burning is an account of the political, religious, and moral censorship of literature, in the context of English literary history. It is principally concerned with the evolution of a modern pattern of censorship between the abolition of licensing in 1695 and the late Victorian period. The author outlines the motives and methods of censorship, illustrating these by more detailed discussion of such cases as those involving Edmund Curll, John Wilkes, Thomas Paine, William Hone, Richard Carlile, William Dugdale and Henry Vizetelly. The unofficial trade in banned books and the campaigns of the Proclamation Society; the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the National Vigilance Association are described with the aid of some previously unpublished material. The book includes an anthology of illustrative material, quoting extracts from publications banned at various times and for various reasons. Pages from such books as Venus in the Cloister are reprinted for the first time in more than two centuries, while the other documents range from the Blasphemy Act of 1698 to a prosecution brought under the Race Relations Act of 1965.