Burned by the public executioner

[Javier]

Hi all,

I find it hilarious that some famous books were not only banned, but sentenced to be burned by the public executioner, usually in the stairs of the courthouse.

I can remember Rousseau's "Emile" and Giordano Bruno's works, but I was wondering if you guys remember any other books that met such a bizarre fate?

[Trevor]

Of course, it wasn't just Bruno's books that got burnt.

Blaise Pascal's The Provincial Letters, a defense of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, was ordered shredded and burned by King Louis XIV of France in 1660.

From http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/...

This is an interesting and very amusing topic. I would love to find out if any books were ever sentenced to be flogged or 'tortured' in other ways. Book banners are far too likely to give books anthropomorphic characteristics that I suspect would have them doing rather surreal things with the books. But it is just a guess.

I know when the police were banning Power Without Glory in Australia in the 1950s they would raid likely houses and confiscate other 'communist' books. Australian police have never been renowned for their literary pretentions and so would generally just take any book in the house with a red cover.