Preface

by Ralph McCoy

THIS IS AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY of some 8,000 books, pamphlets, journal articles, films, and other material relating to freedom of the press in English-speaking countries, from the beginning of printing to the present. "Press" is used generically to include all media of mass communications: books, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, motion pictures, phonograph records, radio, television, and, to a limited extent, stage plays. Subjects include heresy, sedition, blasphemy, obscenity, personal libel, and both positive and negative expressions on freedom of the press.

In format the entries range from a seventeenth-century pamphlet reporting a sedition trial to a Congressional hearing on pornography, to a tape recording of a radio discussion on modern libel laws. Entries are arranged alphabetically by personal or corporate author or by title where author is unknown. A comprehensive subject index identifies topics, concepts, countries, individuals, court decisions, and titles of censored works. Geographically, the bibliography includes the United States and Great Britain, as well as Ireland, Canada, India, Australia, and other present and former Commonwealth countries. Works relating to the Index of the Catholic Church have been included only when they appeared in the English language and were related to English or American practices.

In quality of expression the entries range from John Milton's eloquent defense of a free press, Areopagitica, to the irrational proposals of a vigilante group. In point of view, expressions cover a broad spectrum--from the views of a young London barrister who wrote in 1712 that all controversial ideas should be suppressed since they only lead to trouble, to the twentieth century libertarians who would give absolute freedom to the printed and spoken word. In between are represented varying shades of restraint or freedom.

Generally excluded from the bibliography are the texts of laws, official reports of modern trials, newspaper or news-magazine articles, brief references to freedom of the press that appear as part of general works, and works on the broader topic of civil liberties. The subject of propaganda, unless it also relates to the converse area of censorship, has been excluded, since this field has been covered in the bibliographies of Harold D. Lasswell and associates. Banned books are not included per se, but references to them in annotations are brought out in the index. Within the above limits the bibliography is as complete as time and availability of sources have permitted.

The annotations are intended to be descriptive rather than critical and, within the stated scope of the bibliography, there has been little attempt at selectivity, except to exclude those accounts that were too brief (generally under two pages) or trivial. Occasionally, when a large number of articles reported the same news event, a few representative articles were selected. The length of annotation does not necessarily indicate the importance of the work, but rather the amount of explanation needed to delineate the subject. For example, an extensive quotation may be included from a brief article or pamphlet if, in the estimation of the compiler, it expresses a unique or interesting concept. Background information about events or people frequently has been supplied. I have indulged in an occasional fancy by including a curious or humorous item only slightly related to the topic, e.g. "bibliophagia," or the destruction of a book by eating it.

Interest in the subject of freedom of the press grew out of my doctoral dissertation, Banned in Boston; The Development of Literary Censorship in Massachusetts, at the University of Illinois (1956), suggested by Dean Robert B. Downs of the Graduate School of Library Science, himself a leading writer on freedom of the press. Dean Downs kindly agreed to write the foreword to this book.

This bibliography represents the labor of more than a decade, with intensive work being done during the past four years. Because of the lengthy production time required for the volume, an addendum, its entries identified in the Index by a degree symbol, provides for works issued or discovered after the body of the bibliography had been numbered.

Using more than a score of libraries either in person or by mail, most of the items in the bibliography were actually examined, if not read in their entirety. In addition to the author's personal collection and the Library of Southern Illinois University, the following major libraries were consulted: University of Illinois, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Boston Public Library, University of Wisconsin, Harvard University, New York University Law Library, Northwestern University Law Library, Washington University Law Library, the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, the library of the American Civil Liberties Union, New York, the British Museum, and Trinity College, Dublin. Many other libraries supplied occasional unique items by interlibrary loan. The Free Public Library at New Beford, Mass., supplied by interlibrary loans reports of a number of American libel trials from their William L. Sanger collection. Among the special collections that provided rich sources of materials were the Ewing Baskett collection on freedom of the press at the University of Illinois (Mr. Baskett's widow permitted the compiler to use the collection while it was still in the hands of the family), the New York Public Library's collection, as noted in Carl L. Cannon's bibliographies, and the Theodore A. Schroeder collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society. It is a pleasure to express my appreciation to colleagues in these libraries for their resourceful and patient assistance.

The compiler is indebted to earlier bibliographies in this field, although incomplete and, in a number of cases, out-of-date. The most notable bibliographic effort was that of the great libertarian, Theodore A. Schroeder, in his Free Speech Bibliography (H. W. Wilson Co., 1922). Also useful, particularly for the literature of World War I, was Kimball Young and Raymond D. Lawrence, Bibliography on Censorship and Propaganda (University of Oregon, 1928); William F. Swindler, A Bibliography of Law on Journalism (Columbia University Press, 1947); Carl L. Cannon, Journalism: A Bibliography (New York Public Library, 1924); Warren C. Price, The Literature of Journalism (University of Minnesota Press, 1959); and Helen F. Conover, Freedom of Information; A Selective Report on Recent Writing (Library of Congress, 1949 and 1952). The Catalogue of the McAlpin Collection of British History and Theology at Union Theological Seminary and the study of Burned Books by its librarian emeritus, Charles Ripley Gillett (Columbia University Press, 1932), were useful for identifying seventeenth-century British works. Many clues to early works relating to the formation of the First Amendment and the period of the Sedition Act of 1798 were gathered from Leonard P. Levy, Legacy of Suppression (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960). A valuable means of keeping in touch with recent publishing on freedom of the press, which has seemed to mushroom in the past decade, has been the FOI Digest (Freedom of Information Center, University of Missouri) and the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom (American Library Association).

I am indebted to many librarians, faculty members, and booksellers who, knowing my interest in the subject, brought to my attention items that I might have overlooked. Alan Cohn, Ralph W. Bushee, and Hensley Woodbridge from the library staff of Southern Illinois University were especially alert for new references; Carl D. Cottingham previewed audio-visual material; and a number of graduate students in my seminar on freedom of the press uncovered items of interest. Much of the tedious work of preparing the manuscript for publication was done by my secretary, Mrs. Henrietta Miller; Mrs. Beatrice Moore of Southern Illinois University Press performed the Herculean task of editing. Finally, my wife, Melba E. McCoy, helped with almost every phase of the project from searching to final proofreading.

A grant from Southern Illinois University's Research in Communications helped to defray the cost of typing the manuscript.

Despite the time and effort that have gone into this work there are bound to be errors and omissions, hopefully not too many or too serious. While I am unwilling to commit myself to another decade of keeping this work up-to-date, I would be grateful to readers for any notes of errors or serious omissions.

Carbondale, Illinois
April 1967
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