Dictionary of banned books and newspapers
Bernard Joubert’s Dictionary of banned books and newspapers (2007) is a unique work that took 12 years to produce.
It assembles more than 7000 entries on publications that are still banned in France today, including 2000 foreign titles.
Precise and detailed, each record describes the book and the reasons for banning it.
Both a working reference and a book to read from the first page to the last, this Dictionary reveals large sections of editorial production, books and reviews.
‘Censors should question their own efficiency before beginning their crusades; that would save everyone a lot of trouble. They should take stock of what their predecessors achieved in order to judge their present methods. When you make a list of all the things that irritated censors fifty years ago, their fight against comics, crime novels, “homosexual propaganda”, licentious books… What a catastrophe! Beyond the very short term, they achieved nothing.’
Bernard Joubert, Bibliothèque(s), review of the Association des bibliothécaires de France, December 2008, p. 39.