Ulysses by James Joyce
The novel Ulysses explores the life of Leopold Bloom by following him through Dublin throughout one day, June 16, 1904. When it was released and since critics have lauded its importance as a critical step of modernist writing. Others have found the book to be virtually unreadable. The novel is considered to be one of the greatest literary works of all time. Upon its release, the writer T. S. Eliot reviewed it for the The Dial, a Transcendentalist journal influential in modernist literature. He wrote, “I hold this to be the most important expression which the present age has found…”
Joyce began writing the book in 1914 and it first appeared in book form in 1922. Prior to publication, it appeared in serialization in the The Little Rock Review from 1918 to 1920 (Portions were serialized in a London magazine, which led to the book being banned in the United Kingdom until 1936). In 1920 The Little Rock Review published a portion which included characters engaging in masturbation. The United States Post Office banned earlier sections, under laws which prohibited the sending of pornographic materials through the US mail. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice opened a legal action against The Little Rock Review.
The 1921 trial ended with The Little Rock Review being found obscene, its editors fined, and the serialization of Ulysses ended, in effect banning the book from being shipped through the mail in the United States. After the novel was published in book form and throughout the 1920s the Post Office confiscated and burned copies which came into its hands. Random House plotted a means to initiate another court case, this one against the federal government.
Random House imported a copy of the French language version of the book, and when the book was seized by customs authorities, as they knew it would be, and the publisher went to court with the United States in a case named The United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses. A United States District Court ruled that the book was not obscene, an Appeals Court upheld the ruling, and in 1934 Ulysses was freely available in the United States.
It was not the end of the controversy as the book has continued to be challenged, leading to its removal from libraries and schools as contrary to local morals and beliefs. Ulysses remained unavailable for another two years in the United Kingdom, and another 26 years elapsed before it could be purchased in Ireland, where although never banned the influence of the Catholic Church on the government discouraged its importation.