'The best banned in the land': censorship and Irish writing since 1950

Abstract

This article examines the censorship of Irish writing since 1950. It gives an historical overview of the evolution of literary censorship in twentieth-century Ireland, with particular reference to the operations of the Censorship of Publications Acts, 1929 and 1946. It includes a list of books by Irish authors that were banned since 1950; an account of the supplanting of the Catholic activists who had controlled the Censorship of Publications Board since its inception; the fundamental reforms introduced in 1967; and an account and analysis of the impact of censorship on Irish writing and Irish writers, and the variety of their responses.