Margaret Anderson and Jean Heap were the editors of The Little Review in New York. When they decided to follow Ezra Pound’s recommendation and to serialize Ulysses, they knew they were taking a risk.
Official Powers of Censorship
The 1873 Comstock Act made it illegal to distribute “obscene material” via the federal postal service. If any individual within the U.S. lodged a complaint, officials had the right to seize the suspect material. In 1918, a second law confirmed that the Solicitor General had the ultimate authority to judge such material and to instigate criminal proceedings.
Even prior to Ulysses, The Little Review had been targeted by the authorities, e.g. because of the short story “Cantelman’s Spring-Mate” by the English modernist Wyndham Lewis. Moreover, in the context of World War I, Anderson and Heap’s political beliefs were also considered suspect. The Little Review had, for example, defended the anarchist Emma Goldman when the latter was charged and convicted under the provisions of the 1917 Espionage Act.
Preemptive Censorship Fails to Prevent Charges
Both Ezra Pound and Margaret Anderson made changes to Joyce’s text, in the hope of circumventing the censors. It didn’t help. A total of four issues containing chapters from Ulysses were seized. The fourth of these, which appeared in April 1920, contained the “Nausicaa” chapter, which finally brought matters to a head. The authorities filed charges against Anderson and Heap, with the trial set for February 1921.
When reviewing “Nausicaa,” the three judges responsible applied the so-called Hicklin test. They determined that the text was obscene and therefore endangered public morals. Anderson and Heap were each fined $50. As a consequence, Ulysses could no longer be printed legally in either the U.S. or the United Kingdom. It was also impossible to secure the U.S. copyright, and market demand was met by pirated editions or copies of foreign editions that were smuggled into the country. It was only in late 1933 that the verdict was overturned.
Table of Contents
- James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Law: An Introduction
- Obscenity and Literature: Legal Context around 1915
- James, Nora, and the “Konkubinatsverbot”
- Adultery as a Crime of Property
- Doubt as a Virtue
- Joyce Files a Lawsuit in Zurich
- Dying Without a Safety Net
- Ulysses Outlawed in the U.S.
- A Victory for Free Speech
- Suicide as a Crime
- A Difficult Return: Stricter Migration Laws
- A Defamation Case Against the BBC
Sources: Birmingham, Kevin. The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Head of Zeus, 2014. | Gaipa, Mark, Sean Latham and Robert Scholes. General Introduction. The Little Review “Ulysses,” by James Joyce, Yale University Press, 2015, pp. xi–xix.
