The four-volume Banned Books collection focuses on more than 400 works that have been censored for their political, social, religious, or erotic content -- in the United States and around the world -- from biblical times to the present day.

Works have been chosen for their literary or historical significance, including their role in the history of censorship. Most are read in middle- and high-school curricula as well as in university courses; some have been the focus of major national or international campaigns; and all were either written in English or are available in English translations.

Changing sexual mores have moved many formerly forbidden books out of locked cabinets and into libraries and classrooms.

Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Sexual Grounds is the first reference work to examine the issues underlying the suppression of over one hundred "sexually obscene" works.

Works covered Include:
-- An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
-- The Arabian Nights, Sir Richard Burton, trans.
-- The Art of Love, Ovid
-- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
-- Candide, Voltaire
-- Dubliners, James Joyce
-- The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
-- La Terre, Emile Zola
-- November, Gustave Flaubert
-- Pamela, Samuel Richardson
-- Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
-- Rabbit, Run, John Updike
-- Sanctuary, William Faulkner
-- Tess of theD'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
-- Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
-- Ulysses, James Joyce
-- Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence.