Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature

by Robert Darnton

Overview

"Splendid…[Darnton gives] us vivid, hard-won detail, illuminating narrative, and subtle, original insight." —Timothy Garton Ash, New York Review of Books

With his uncanny ability to spark life in the past, Robert Darnton re-creates three historical worlds in which censorship shaped literary expression in distinctive ways.

In eighteenth-century France, censors, authors, and booksellers collaborated in making literature by navigating the intricate culture of royal privilege. Even as the king's censors outlawed works by Voltaire, Rousseau, and other celebrated Enlightenment writers, the head censor himself incubated Diderot’s great Encyclopedie by hiding the banned project’s papers in his Paris townhouse. Relationships at court trumped principle in the Old Regime.

Shaken by the Sepoy uprising in 1857, the British Raj undertook a vast surveillance of every aspect of Indian life, including its literary output. Years later the outrage stirred by the British partition of Bengal led the Raj to put this knowledge to use. Seeking to suppress Indian publications that it deemed seditious, the British held hearings in which literary criticism led to prison sentences. Their efforts to meld imperial power and liberal principle fed a growing Indian opposition.

In Communist East Germany, censorship was a component of the party program to engineer society. Behind the unmarked office doors of Ninety Clara-Zetkin Street in East Berlin, censors developed annual plans for literature in negotiation with high party officials and prominent writers. A system so pervasive that it lodged inside the authors’ heads as self-censorship, it left visible scars in the nation’s literature.

By rooting censorship in the particulars of history, Darnton's revealing study enables us to think more clearly about efforts to control expression past and present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351804
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/21/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,041,739
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robert Darnton is the author of many award-winning works in French cultural history, and taught for years at Princeton and Harvard. He is a chevalier in the Légion d’Honneur, and winner of the National Humanities Medal.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 9

Introduction 13

Part 1 Bourbon France: Privilege and Repression 21

Typography and Legality 24

The Censor's Point of View 30

Everyday Operations 37

Problem Cases 49

Scandal And Enlightenment 54

The Book Police 59

An Author in the Servants' Quarters 61

A Distribution System: Capillaries and Arteries 69

Part 2 British India: Liberalism and Imperialism 87

Amateur Ethnography 89

Melodrama 96

Surveillance 101

Sediton? 114

Repression 120

Courtroom Hermeneutics 126

Wandering Minstrels 131

The Basic Contradiction 142

Part 3 Communist East Germany: Planning and Presecution 145

Native Informants 147

Inside the Archives 164

Relations with Authors 170

Author-Editor Negotiations 182

Hard Knocks 191

A Play: The Show Must Not Go On 203

A Novel: Publish and Pulp 209

How Censorship Ended 221

Conclusion 229

Acknowledgments 245

Notes 247

Illustration Credits 294

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

"As we move into an age of almost universal surveillance, it is cheering to remember that censors can never achieve the degree of control to which they aspire, and need never have the last word."

Telegraph (UK) - Maureen Freely

"Provocative."

Jonathan Yardley

"A fascinating visit to the censor’s office."

Booklist

"Enthralling."

Alberto Manguel

"There is no better guide to the inside story of censorship in the past or present than the internationally renowned historian Robert Darnton. He makes the most prosaic encounters come to life…Darnton brings all his skills and passions for books to this fascinating study of censorship in three different times and places and draws a number of conclusions that will be of interest to readers everywhere."

Lynn Hunt

"[V]ivid, fascinating…a human comedy full of intriguing revelations."

Wall Street Journal - Felipe Fernández-Armesto

[V]ivid, fascinating...a human comedy full of intriguing revelations.--Felipe Fernández-Armesto "Wall Street Journal"

A fascinating visit to the censor's office.-- "Booklist"

An intriguing story emerges as censors are presented as both a necessary evil and an authoritarian measure, working with authors as much as against them...[A] thought-provoking look at a controversial subject.-- "Publishers Weekly"

As we move into an age of almost universal surveillance, it is cheering to remember that censors can never achieve the degree of control to which they aspire, and need never have the last word.--Maureen Freely "Telegraph (UK)"

Enthralling.--Alberto Manguel "New York Times Book Review"

Provocative.--Jonathan Yardley "Washington Post"

There is no better guide to the inside story of censorship in the past or present than the internationally renowned historian Robert Darnton. He makes the most prosaic encounters come to life...Darnton brings all his skills and passions for books to this fascinating study of censorship in three different times and places and draws a number of conclusions that will be of interest to readers everywhere.--Lynn Hunt, author of Inventing Human Rights

From the Publisher

…what exactly is censorship? This is the question with which Robert Darnton, the foremost historian of the book and the art of reading, begins his enthralling new volume, Censors at Work. "Rather than starting with a definition and then looking for examples that conform to it," Darnton writes, "I have proceeded by interrogating censors themselves." The censors Darnton has interrogated belong to three very different historical settings…Darnton spoke with the German censors in the flesh, and with the ghosts of the French and British ones through the vast archives they left behind. Thankfully for Darnton, thankfully for his readers, the one incontrovertible fact about censors is that they love paperwork.

The New York Times Book Review - Alberto Manguel

06/02/2014
Darnton (The Case for Books), director of the University Library at Harvard, examines the complex relationship between central government censorship and authors, particularly how attempts to control communication and information have both improved and challenged the field of literature. He focuses on three distinct periods: 18th-century France, 19th-century India, and 20th-century East Germany. An intriguing story emerges as censors are presented as both a necessary evil and an authoritarian measure, working with authors as much as against them, and helping to—at least in the censor’s mind—improve literary works even as they force them to conform to certain standards. Acting as voices of the state, as editors, even as coauthors, censors are sometimes subversive and sympathetic, sometimes arbitrary and unyielding. Darnton’s argument is a mixed message, both upholding censors for their influence and bringing them to task for their part in enforcing stricter measures enacted by unforgiving governments. The writing is drily academic and the material often dense and abstract, as he struggles to assign a definition to the murky and wide-ranging concept of censorship. However, the story comes alive when Darnton interviews several former East German government censors to glean their experiences. While the material is sometimes arcane, it’s still a thought-provoking look at a controversial subject. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

04/15/2014
In another rigorous, exciting literary history, Darnton shows that in three eras—18th-century France, India under the British Raj, and late 20th-century East Germany—censorship shaped and even promoted the creation of literature. Catnip for smarties.

Library Journal

2014-06-12
Darnton (History/Harvard Univ.;The Case for Books, 2009, etc.) takes an ethnographic approach in this deeply researched comparative history, examining how censorship functioned in three authoritarian regimes: 18th-century monarchal France; 19th-century India under the British Raj; and 20th-century East Germany.The author’s surprising discoveries complicate the definition of censorship as repression by a ruling class in its effort to control social order. In Enlightenment France, censors acted as collaborators with authors, taking on the role of peer reader or copy editor to make a manuscript viable for royal privilege—i.e., an official stamp approving publication. These censors, often authors themselves, assiduously carried out their role, and authors often willingly revised their work. “Despite the occasional disputes,” writes Darnton, “censorship…drove authors and censors together rather than apart.” The British in India, in an effort “to understand the Indians, not merely to defeat them,” were intent on gathering information: “Everything was surveyed, mapped, classified and counted, including human beings….The catalogues of books belonged to their effort to catalogue everything.” By monitoring publications, they could detect signs of rebellion. Not until the British noted “explosions of nationalism” in the early 20th century did surveillance lead to police repression and legal prosecution. Authors, publishers and printers were arrested and tried according to newly created laws. In Germany, Darnton talked with two censors and had access to considerable archival dossiers. The censors claimed their job was to publish works that fit into the government’s overall plan: “Censorship as they understood it was positive. In some ways, it was downright heroic—a struggle against heavy odds to maintain a high level of culture while building socialism.” Dossiers reveal the details of that struggle: manuscripts purged of references to individualism; dire restrictions on travel, even within the country; and outright violence. Censorship in East Germany, as elsewhere, involved an interlaced system of authors, editors, bureaucrats, publishers and, not least, readers themselves.In the current climate of debate over national surveillance, Darnton’s vibrant history takes on particular relevance.

Kirkus Reviews