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Children s Book of the Year citation from Publishers Weekly. The Facts Speak for
Themselves (1997) was on the School Library Journal s Best Books of 1997 list and was
nominated for the 1997 National Book Award.
CONNELL, VIVIAN (1905 1981)
Born in Cork County, Ireland, the playwright and novelist lived most of his life in
France. He published six novels and three plays; his most successful works, the chi-
nese room (1942) and september in quinze (1952), were both objects of censors for
their celebration of sexual openness.
D ANNUNZIO, GABRIELE (1836 1938)
Born in Abruzzi, Italy, the novelist, poet, dramatist, and soldier typified the fin de
siècle decadence that defied bourgeois ethics. His works omit any concern for moral-
ity or conscience and profess, instead, that meaning in life comes from the pleasures of
the senses. the triumph of death (1894) was attacked by American censors who were
offended by the novel s decadence.
DEFOE, DANIEL (1660 1731)
Born Daniel Foe in London, England, the pamphleteer, journalist, political agent,
and novelist wrote frank and dramatically realistic fiction. His novel moll flanders
(1922) was heartily received upon publication, but late-19th-century censors found its
frank portrayal of sexuality immoral.
DELL, FLOYD (1887 1969)
Born in Barry, Illinois, the celebrated novelist, playwright, critic, editor, and poet
became one of the brightest lights in American avant-garde and Greenwich Village
bohemianism in the early years of the 20th century. A major member of the Chicago
Literary Renaissance of the early 1920s, Dell moved to New York City where, in
the late 1920s and the 1930s, this proponent of free love and champion of feminism,
socialism, and Freudianism flourished as a writer. His novel janet march created a
controversy in 1923 with its portrayal of a sexually active modern young woman.
DONLEAVY, JAMES PATRICK (1926 )
Born in Brooklyn, New York, the novelist and short story writer has lived mostly in
Ireland, which figures prominently in his work. the ginger man (1955), an autobio-
graphical novel, is his most celebrated and most censored book. An unexpurgated ver-
sion did not appear in the United States until 1965.
DREISER, THEODORE (1871 1945)
Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the American journalist, magazine editor, play-
wright, and prolific novelist pioneered the literary movement known as naturalism.
Dreiser depicted the lives of common people in such novels as SISTER CARRIE (1900)
and an american tragedy (1925). Sister Carrie was attacked and heavily censored as
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILES
an immoral treatment of a scandalous woman s rise to success. Dreiser also suffered
failure due to censorship of the genius (1915), an autobiographical novel about
power and sex that was labeled pornography and attacked by moralists. In 1925,
he published An American Tragedy, widely regarded as his finest achievement. Crit-
ics labeled it immoral, and the novel became the subject of a notorious trial.
DU MAURIER, GEORGE (1834 1896)
Born in Paris, France, the novelist and illustrator was famous for his caricatures in Punch
before achieving success through his novels. trilby (1894), censored in Philadelphia,
incorporates memories of his days as an art student in Paris.
FARRELL, JAMES THOMAS (1904 1979)
Born in Chicago, the poet, critic, journalist, and novelist often depicted in his fiction
the lives of Irish-Americans in Chicago from 1900 through the Great Depression of
the 1930s. His best-known novels make up the studs lonigan trilogy, which, with A
WORLD I NEVER MADE (1936), were repeatedly subjected to banning attempts for their
language and sexual situations. Farrell s fiction is a part of the tradition of naturalistic
writing.
FAULKNER, WILLIAM (1897 1962)
Born in Oxford, Mississippi, this major figure of contemporary American literature
and one of America s most innovative novelists depicted ordinary society in terms
of ageless human dramas. In 1949, Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for literature. He
repeatedly explored the question of human freedom and the obstacles to it racism,
regimentation, shame, fear, pride, and overly abstract principles infusing his novels
with this honesty. Such works as AS I LAY DYING (1930), sanctuary (1931), and the
wild palms (1939) have been attacked as being vulgar and immoral precisely
because they depict realistically how people think, speak, and feel.
FIELDING, HENRY (1707 1754)
Born in Sharpham Park, Glastonbury, Somerset, England, the lawyer, playwright, and
novelist contributed significantly to the development of the English novel. He became
London s first police magistrate and organized the Bow Street runners, the first paid
police force. Fielding s the history of tom jones, a foundling (1749) stirred con-
troversy upon publication and suffered censorship for nearly two centuries.
FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE (1821 1880)
Born at Rouen in Normandy, France, the novelist aimed to create reality through
exactness, accuracy of detail, and careful portrayal of object and event. Typical of
his realistic method is madame bovary (1856), censored because of its suggestions of
sexual activity and its theme of adultery.
FRIDAY, NANCY (1937 )
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Friday began her writing career as a journalist in
San Juan, Puerto Rico, before writing books about women s sexuality in the early
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LITERATURE SUPPRESSED ON SEXUAL GROUNDS
1970s. Critics have labeled Friday s books unscientific because the author solic-
ited responses by including a mailing address in her early books. My Secret Garden:
Women s Sexual Fantasies (1973) and Forbidden Flowers: More Women s Sexual Fantasies
(1975) told women that their fantasies were not uncommon. In 1978, after interview-
ing 300 mothers and daughters nationwide, Friday published My Mother/My Self: The
Daughter s Search for Identity. She next wrote about men in Men in Love: Men s Sexual
Fantasies; The Triumph of Love over Rage (1980), which includes 200 male fantasies
selected from 3,000 letters. In 1991 Friday published women on top: how real life
changed women s sexual fantasies, which was heavily criticized for its graphic and
sensational content. The Power of Beauty (1996) explores the effect that female physical
attractiveness has on society and among women themselves.
GAUTIER, THÉOPHILE (1811 1872)
Born in Tarbes, France, the poet, novelist, journalist, travel writer, and critic became
the leader of France s art for art s sake movement. His first important novel, made-
moiselle de maupin (1835), epitomized the movement and was banned after motivat-
ing controversy. Gautier s sensitivity to beauty and his insistence on formal perfection
inspired Charles Baudelaire and the Parnassian movement.
GENET, JEAN (1910 1986)
Born in Paris, France, the dramatist and novelist was the son of a prostitute and spent
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