The word ‘controversial’ means “giving rise or likely to give rise to controversy or public disagreement”. But surely not everyone is going to agree about any one novel, and isn’t it part of the point of novels that they stretch our minds, display to us the experiences of lives very different from our own, and that they make us think? Long live controversy in novels, I say!

But not everyone agrees, and over the centuries books have been banned for many reasons.

This guide tells you about some famous books that have raised the ire of the authorities and have been banned as a result. Some books have been controversial for religious reasons, others for having content that was too sexually explicit, others for a use of language that the public was simply not yet ready for. Why was Shakespeare’s King Lear banned for several decades? What was it about the children’s story The Rabbit’s Wedding that so disturbed Americans? How have publishers and booksellers been punished over the years? Why is the American classic Huckleberry Finn consistently being banned from school libraries?