If Magdalen College alumnus Oscar Wilde had wished to settle into an afternoon at the Old Bodleian to read his own book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, he would have found it nearly impossible to do so. Deemed to be too obscene for unrestricted access by the 19th century Bodleian, his book would have been buried away in Oxford’s clandestine restricted section along with other ‘unsuitable’ material. With four hundred years under its belt, the Bodleian has not been entirely immune to blemishes in its commitment to fostering liberated academic practice.
There have been centuries of whispers, typical of the hallowed halls of academia, that some books should be restricted or altogether removed. Casting aside accusations of OX1 believing it is the centre of society, the Bodleian indeed does not exist in isolation: It is one of only six legal deposit libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and if such an esteemed academic institution restricts books, it risks emboldening others to follow suit.
In a university education, learning to face perspectives you disagree with is as essential as wading through the endless pool of sources supporting your arguments and interests. To ban a book for its obscenity only prevents its reader from learning how to handle exposure to such content and deprives critical engagement with history’s mistakes. Banning books is not protection, it is disarmament.
There’s also the trivial matter of human nature: people want what they can’t have. The best way to spark interest in a text is to tell someone they can’t read it. The idea of a licentious underground in the Bodleian (admittedly not the Glink) filled with mysterious manuscripts oozing with dangerous secrets would only produce an allure that makes such texts into forbidden fruits.
The Bodleian library and a restricted section of unruly materials may produce chuckles from its Harry Potter-esque connotations, but the actual collection of restricted books provides a telling insight into the irony of intellectual suppression in an academic arcadia. Historically, book restriction in the Bodleian was centred around a collection known as the Phi books, aptly named due to the Greek Phi symbol on the spine of its literary hostages. Originating in the late Victorian era, the collection acted as a loophole in the battle between the legal deposit system and the need to protect innocent undergraduate minds from profanity. Texts deemed to be ‘obscene’ were muzzled with the phi stamp and could only be accessed upon request with a letter from a tutor.
In many respects, looking back at such collections of banned books can help us chart the course of human attitudes towards what is considered improper across time. In the Bodleian, notable books that became restricted inmates include James Joyce’s Ulysses or D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, authors who now frequently appear on undergraduate reading lists. Where the Victorian Oxonians were primarily concerned with sexual profanity or obscenity, contemporary debates about censorship tend towards social controversy. Recently, the US Education Department vowed to abandon its role in investigating schools that received civil rights complaints for book censorship primarily due to race and sexuality. It is perhaps unsurprising that modern books commonly associated with restriction tend to be canonical titans such as Orwell’s 1984, and Animal Farm, or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. While the above can all be easily accessed by Bodleian readers, the resurgence of censorship debates should serve as a reminder not to take this freedom for granted.
In the 21st century, there is the issue of the internet being able to overrule attempts to restrict or censor a literary text. Restricting a text may appear pointless if a summary can be accessed online in seconds. Worse, is there any danger in banning a thoughtful and scholarly text if misinformation on a similar topic is floating around unchallenged on social media?
Nowadays, Bodleian restrictions tend to occur when publishers communicate any errors or legal issues that would warrant the book to be kept behind closed doors. Fortunately, the Bodleian mandates that no books be destroyed or removed entirely. Instead, they are placed in a restricted section and can be accessed upon special request. This assurance that no text is outrightly removed is more respectful to the legal deposit protection, and the reasons for restriction are more practical than ideological. However, it must remain that we don’t return to previous systems of book bans for their content or controversy. Regardless of what approach schools and universities take worldwide, if the Bodleian wishes to remain a statute of academia, then they must make sure any text remains available to be read, even if it must be requested.
Ideas do not vanish simply because they are hidden away. Books that contain contentious ideas or explicit content should be free to be critiqued and contextualised rather than denied. If every generation removed their concept of the distasteful or obscene, we would be left with empty shelves. To think restrictions are reasonable for brokering peace and keeping the academic community in a state of amicable neutrality is to misinterpret the point of a book. Indeed, empowering a finite number of individuals with the authority to impose sweeping bans, which affect not just academia but also members of the public, is not only intellectually condescending but also insults the reader’s free will. Books, even at their most controversial point, should be provocative rather than squandered for the sake of coddling capable minds.
Restricting one book initiates a precedent that, if left unregulated, could quickly spiral out of control. If one book becomes banned, why not another? What criteria defines obscenity, and who gets to decide? The Bodleian is not Blackwells, where titles are shelved according to consumerist concerns. It is a sanctuary of knowledge that should steer clear from the business of approval.
Fortunately, if Wilde had wished to read his book today, he would have full access to the Bodleian, Radcliffe Camera, and many college libraries. His decree that ‘there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written’ is one that any library should live by. For now, we can be grateful that both have a home on our Bodleian shelves.
