Flag of the People's Republic of China
Book censorship has a long history in China. The First Emperor oversaw the burning of Confucian texts in 213 B.C. In the 20th Century, Chinese officials busied themselves with banning of books. In the 1960s and 70s, foreign books by J.D Salinger and Arthur Conan Doyle were banned books. Students reportedly resorted to hand-writing copies and binding them in string, to circulate them to their peers. [Source: Evan Osnos 'China's Censored World' in New York Times, May 2, 2014]
However in more recent times, the rules governing foreign titles in China were supposedly relaxed. This hasn't stopped 'The History & Arts of the Dominatrix' being confiscated by officials. Book orders sent out to buyers in China are simply not arriving. No notice is being served. No documentation is sent to buyers to let them know why their book has been confiscated. The book simply vanishes into thin air. Meanwhile a search on Amazon kindle in China comes up with the message: 没有找到任何与 "The History & Arts of the Dominatrix" 相关的商品
The book itself makes no criticism of China, nor even discusses China. So one can only guess that it's the topic - Dominant female sexuality, or discussing censorship in general within the book - that the Chinese authorities have taken exception to.
Archival photograph of Nazi burning of books, Berlin, 1933
They are of course not the first ideological regime to ban books. The Nazi regime banned books written by Jewish authors. The Catholic church had their 'Index Librorum Prohibitorum' (Index of Forbidden Books), which featured books deemed subversive to their ideology - by Galileo, Pascal, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Immanuel Kant, Descartes, Voltaire, Casanova, Francis Bacon, Balzac, Emile Zola, Marquis de Sade, Madame de Stael, John Stuart Mill, Georges Sand, Martin Luther, John-Paul Satre, and through to the feminist author Simone de Beauvoir.
The Victorian author Henry Spencer Ashbee referenced in making his own bibliographic index of erotica in 1877 - under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi. And indeed books dealing with sexuality have regularly drawn censorship.
Illustration showing books being burnt, referencing the Catholic Church's banning and burning of books
in illustration for Frontispiece of Pisanus Fraxi (Henry Spencer Ashbee) 'Index Librorum Prohibitorum' (1877)
John Cleland's 1748 book 'Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure' (and better known as 'Fanny Hill') saw the author and publisher thrown into prison, and the book withdrawn from print. Copies circulated between friends and were sold 'under the counter'. Indeed due to the taboo of books dealing with topic such as sexuality and flagellation, book publishers would often publish very small runs, and circulate them by mail order to avoid scrutiny.
D.H Lawrence's 1928 book 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' was originally printed in Florence, and released only in censored form. While Penguin Books were tried in court in 1960 over their edition, under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. Penguin were ultimately to win the trial, which examined the value of books "in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern". The R v Penguin Books case was to usher in an era of more liberalization of publishing in the United Kingdom.
Forbidden books have subversively functioned for me as a list of books to be read! My own view on censorship of books features in page 112 of 'The History & Arts of the Dominatrix', and may be another reason the Chinese authorities banned my book. I write:
"In general, that which a person or institution bans, burns, locks away, censors or marks with a red ‘X’, they simultaneously mark as holding power. Those who most busy themselves in banning books and information, index their own belief system in torrent and contradiction at odds with reality. They censor what echoes with some kernel of truth, and with it an immense power, conflicting with or contradicting the ideology that they seek to impose – by force – on everyone else."
(Anne O Nomis 'The History & Arts of the Dominatrix' 2013 Mary Egan Publishing & Anna Nomis Ltd, UK, p.112)
Anne O Nomis 'The History & Arts of the Dominatrix' (2013)
Mary Egan Publishing & Anna Nomis Ltd, UK, ISBN 978-0-9927010-0-0