Banned Books

Updated: Sept. 23, 2014.

Many of the works in the Online Library of Liberty have been banned or censored at various times by governments, established churches, and pubic schools for their content. This list has been compiled from the following sources:

• Beacon for Freedom of Expression. Dedicated to the Library of Alexandria.
• Essay on The Long History of Censorship
• See, the Beacon for Freedom of Expression database of banned books where you can search for your favorite author. My search revealed the following:
• 10 books by Hayek and one by Frdric Bastiat were banned by the Communist Government in Poland between 1976 and 1989
• the Dictionnaire de l'conomie politique was put on the “Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index on Banned Books) by the Catholic Church in 1856.
• The American Library Association: Celebrating the Freedom to Read
• University of Pennsylvania The Online Books Page - Banned Books Online
• Wikipedia List of Banned Books:
• List of books banned by governments
• List of authors and works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
• The Forbidden Library (in association with Amazon)
• Index of Prohibited Books 1557-1966 (Fordham University)

• The Advancement of Learning (Sir Francis Bacon)
• The Analects (Confucius)
• Areopagitica (1644) (Jebb ed.) (John Milton)
• The Barber of Seville, or the Useless Precaution (Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais)
• Candide, ou l’Optimisme; traduit de l’Allemand de M. le Docteur Ralph (Voltaire)
• The Colloquies 2 vols. (Rev. E. Johnson)
• The Complaint of Peace (Desiderius Erasmus)
• Critique of Pure Reason (Friedrich Max Müller)
• The Divine Comedy, in 3 vols. (Langdon trans.) (Dante Alighieri)
• Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge)
• Essays of Montaigne, in 10 vols. (Michel de Montaigne)
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 12 vols. (William Edward Hartpole Lecky)
• The Holy Qur-an (Koran) (Arabic and English) (Maulvi Muhammed Ali)
• Ideal Empires and Republics (Sir Francis Bacon)
• In Praise of Folly (Desiderius Erasmus)
• The Institutes of the Christian Religion (John Calvin)
• Leviathan (1909 ed) (Thomas Hobbes)
• The Manual of a Christian Knight (Desiderius Erasmus)
• The Marriage of Figaro (or the Follies of a Day) (Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais)
• The Method, Meditations and Philosophy of Descartes (Réné Descartes)
• The Natural History of Religion (David Hume)
• Novum Organum (Sir Francis Bacon)
• Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind (Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet)
• Philosophical Works of David Hume (David Hume)
• The Poetical Works of John Milton (John Milton)