My Annotated Bibliography on Censorship of Printed Knowledge!

Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., with a collection that fills about 838 miles (1,349 km) of bookshelves, and holds about 147 million items with 33 million books, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books. I visited this place at a young age during a junior high school trip to DC. The first thing that popped into my head as I say the seemingly infinite expanse of bookshelves surrounding me was "how in the world would I be able to find the book I am looking for!?"As I read the assignment requirements for this blog, that memory came to mind and the same fear arose. How in the world was I going to find all these printed books by means of other printed sources. Would I actually have to go to the library and browse real books?! The answer was yes. And in doing so, I found that the actual process of finding these sources became just as interesting as the information each source yielded. Here is my annotated bibliography on the use of censorship in printed knowledge before 1700:

Milton, John. Areopagitica. London, N. Douglas, 1644.This book was written during the english civil war and is considered by many to be one of history's most influential philosophical defences of the basic foundational principal to the right to freedom of speech and expression. Milton wrote the prose as a statement against licensing and censorship. [I found this work as I read the collection of periodicals called "Freedom of the Press." After reading the online digital copy I went to the Harold b. Lee Library and they actually had a copy of Areopagitica, it was the 1922 publication, obviously not the one from 1644!!]

Defoe, Daniel. An Essay on the Regulation of the Press. . London, 1704. Defoe’s writings on politics and economic affairs were highly influential in their own day, they have also constantly been drawn upon by modern political, social and economic historians, as well as by literary scholars. This specific essay covers the implications over the government creating licenses and copyrights that limit the press. (I found this work through the referenced works at the Harold B. Library under the "Historical & Political Reference Works" section. I initially found it online in the Oxford referenced online section and saw that it was in printed form at the Library.)

Sova, Dawn B. Dawn B. Banned Plays: Censorship Histories of 125 Stage Dramas. Facts on File, 2004. This novel is particularly of interest as it covers the regulation required of playwrights who used the stage as a forum to express their own views on religion and politics. Registration provided an opportunity for the monarchy to invoke a form of censorship and the means to suppress too much freedom of thought and criticism of the crown and public affairs. This was a main reason for Shakespeare never publishing any of his plays and therefore none of the original manuscripts have survived. (I found this book by just browsing the library shelves and started skimming and was intrigued by the forms of censorships that plays have had through the centuries and even to today!)

Robertson, Randy. Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century England. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Robertson covers the issues of the workings of the licensing machinery, the designs of art under a regime of censorship and differs from the other works I have cited in its analysis of both the mechanics of early modern censorship and the poetics that the licensing system produced the forms and pressures of self-censorship.( I found this work in the bibliography of an earlier printed source found in the library that analyzed Milton's works in the English Civil war, this book was used in researching the conflict of censorship in that time period.)

Heady,Katy. Literature and censorship in Restoration Germany: repression and rhetoric Camden House, 2009. Heady discusses the effects of censorship on literary writing in Post-Napoleon Germany and Austria. It focuses on the great extent of repression the authors Grabbe, Heine and Grillparzer were exposed to, and the creative techniques they had to use to get their artistic messages across. (I found this novel online through google books. By far the easiest locating process I had throughout this whole assignment!)


As I researched the effects and implications of censorship among nations during the 1600s and 1700s I realized that the hardest process of locating relevant texts was trying to find them through other printed sources at the library. It was much easier to look up them up online. But as I progressed in my research through skimming the printed sources I realized I became much more in tune with how to effectively find relevant sources that connected with my topic. I found that instead of just having a linear form of research such as looking up source online and then reading it, I had a much more integrated approach at the library with cross referencing printed sources and being sent to different departments for different texts. By the end I felt I had a good scope of the different authors and figures who had an influence on censorship of printed sources during the time period before the 1700s. So is it really that hard to find what your looking for in the Library of Congress? Not if you know where to look and how to look for it!