SOME EARLY BOOKS

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 February 1937, Page 10

SOME EARLY BOOKS

BANNED, BURNED, BRANDED The London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald writes: An exhibition that would certainly be of supreme interest to those discriminating gentlemen -whose provilege it is to censor the reading of the Australian public is to remain open at Oxford until April 24, by which time many visiting Australians will probably have seen it. Literary mediocrities are already attending the show in hundreds, but, most felicitously, the majority of the patrons is composed of entirely educated persons, who are wont to exclhhn at the intolerance of their forbears. One of the earliest “specimens” is Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, censored at the time, by Canberra’s ancestors, as an unequalled fount of heresy, and therefore banned, with all the translator’s other works. That was in the same reign as the first regular censorship of the English Press was proclaimed in 1538, later to be stiffened, if possible, by the Star Chamber degree in 1586. For three centuries, in fact, censorship of the printing press, in all its guises, was a normal function of British statecraft.

The writer of the earliest book on show, "The Historic of Italie,” was hanged and quartered for certain injudicious remarks about the Italian clergy. Queen Mary, the bloody, was furious when she read them, and acted accordingly. Nor was her unsympathetic sister. Queen Bess, more liberal when she dealt with John Stubbs for his "Discoveries of a Gaping Gull"’ which contained an embittered attack on the proposed marriage of the Queen and the Duke of Anjou. Mr. Stubbs's right hand was cut off, but, “having lost his right hand, ’ says the Bodleian footnote, “he. immediately, with memorable courtesy, raised his hat with his left hand and cried. ‘God save the Queen!’’’ In 1625, Leighton’s “Sion’s Plea Against the Prelacie” was urgently suppressed and the author was brand-1 ed in the face, lost both ears, and had his nostrils slit. His book, needless to say. was publicly burned. And. though not burned. Sir Walter Raleigh’s “History of the World” was "called in" for being, as the authorities said, “too saucy in censuring] princes.” Thus, as we see, history is always repeating itself. We do not’ actually] kill offending authors nowadays, but we brand them, and we most assuredly ban their works. Commanding a vote, the unintelligent must be placated.