14 March 2012

The Censor's Library to launch at Paperchain Manuka

| johnboy
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Paperchain sent in this news which sounded interesting enough to share with you:

Please join us for the launch of ‘The Censor’s Library: Uncovering the Lost
History of Australia’s Banned Books’ by Nicole Moore.

The book will be launched by Professor Angela Woollacott, Manning Clark Chair
of History at the ANU.

Tuesday March 27
5.45 for 6.00pm

RSVP Monday March 26
Telephone 6295 6723 or
email info@paperchainbookstore.com.au

A history of book censorship in Australia – what we couldn’t read, didn’t know, and why!

For much of the twentieth century, Australia banned more books and more serious books than most other English-speaking or Western countries, from the ‘Kama Sutra’ through to Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ and Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’.

‘The Censor’s Library’ is the first comprehensive examination of Australian book censorship, based around the author’s discovery of the secret ‘censor’s library’ in the National Archive – 793 boxes of banned books, prohibited from the 1920s to the 1980s.

As it has for much of Australia’s history, censorship continues to attract heated debate, from the Henson affair to the national internet feed. But federal publications censorship has been a largely secret affair for most of the century, deliberately kept from the knowledge of the public. ‘The Censor’s Library’ is a provocative account of this scandalous history. Combining scholarship with the narrative tension of a thriller, Nicole Moore exposes the secret history of censorship in Australia.

Nicole Moore has published widely on Australian literary history, nationally and internationally. Her bibliography ‘Banned in Australia’ (co-authored with Marita Bullock) was launched on the Austlit web resource in 2008. She was contributing editor to the ‘Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature’ for the period 1900-1950 (Allen and Unwin 2009). She is Associate Professor in English at the University of New South Wales at ADFA in Canberra.

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What a great idea for a book!

I look forward to a related title: The Moderator’s Library: Uncovering the Riot Act’s Hidden Comments by JB.

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