This project, sponsored by the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and the American Association of University Presses (AAUP) is a joint effort of Library Affairs, the University Press, and Information Technology at Southern Illinois University.

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale(SIUC) is one of thirteen institutions selected in December of 1993 to participate in this joint initiative. Library Affairs at SIUC and the SIU Press have a long history of cooperation, epitomized, perhaps, by the Press's publication the three volumes of Ralph E. McCoy's annotated Freedom of the Press bibliography. McCoy, now a resident of Blacksburg, Virginia, is Emeritus Dean of Library Affairs and is known internationally for both his achievements in librarianship and his First Amendment Freedoms scholarship. The private collection of First Amendment materials McCoy acquired in the course of his research is now a part of the First Amendment Freedoms research collection in the Library's Special Collections area and is used by scholars world-wide. Making the citations, annotations, and, where possible, full texts available via electronic networking is a goal which will aid scholarship, and, we believe, the Library and the Press.

Please read important information about the copyright.

Censorship creates an eternal crisis. In the present book Ralph E. McCoy trenchantly examines the ever-recurring problems exemplified in the suppressions in English-speaking countries during the last four centuries. The word "press" in the title of this annotated bibliography is used generically, for the 8,000 entries include censorship and its opposite, the freedom of expression, as found in all media of mass communication: books, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, motion pictures, phonograph records, radio, television, and stage plays.

Geographically, Freedom of the Press includes entries for the United States and Great Britain as well as Ireland, Canada, India, Australia, and other present and former Commonwealth countries.

Through the ages only the direction of censorship changes--during one period concern may be with religious heresy, during another with sedition or, as today, with obscenity. These "crimes" as well as those of blasphemy and personal libel and the many statements for and against freedom of the press are fully recorded.

The earliest report of book burning in England was that of William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament (1525-26). In the next century William Prynne's Histrio-Mastix, a criticism of the immorality of the English stage, was burned by the common hangman in 1633, and for criticizing the queen, Prynne was imprisoned, pilloried, and shorn of his ears. In America in 1650, authorities found William Pynchon's theological work, The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, to be "erronyous and hereticale" and ordered it burned in the Boston marketplace. In 1690 the first American newspaper, Publick Occurrances, was suppressed after the first issue.

The wide range of references includes John Milton's Areopagetica, the John Peter Zenger case which established notable precedence for a free press in America, and the murder of Elijah Lovejoy when he attempted to protect his printing press against a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois. This bibliography also deals with Anthony Comstock and the vice societies that flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, the espionage trials of wartime, the hysteria of the McCarthy era that led to the State Department censorship of U.S. libraries overseas, the recent controversy between Bar and Press over restrictions on coverage at court trials, present-day intimidation of liberal newsmen in the South, as well as the long-deliberated obscenity case against Ralph Ginzberg.

The subject index offers the researcher easy reference to court decisions which have reshaped Anglo-American laws and our response to plays, movies, such books as D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and John Cleland's Fanny Hill, and decisions on libel and invasion of privacy. "Blacklisting" in the broadcasting and motion picture industries; religious freedom, as seen in the English free-thought movement, in the Tennessee "monkey trial," and in the Catholic Church's opposition to the movie The Miracle; efforts of local and national pressure groups to prevent the sale of books or to remove objectionable works from public and school libraries--all these manifestations of censorship have their place in this compilation.

Freedom of the Press represents more than a decade's examination, in person or by mail, of documents in scores of libraries in the United States, and also in the British Museum; and Mr. McCoy's personal library, some 1,200 volumes on freedom of the press, proved invaluable to his research.

This book is designed for the scholar, lawyer, journalist, librarian--anyone concerned with mass communication. But for any reader it is invaluable as a reference work on freedom of expression. An addenda contains the most recent reports on court decisions and other activities for and against censorship up to the time of going to press.

Here is a table of contents of the bibliography.

Also, you can find an `index' and `text' of the bibliography in alphabetical order.