The 1922 novel by James Joyce that was banned in the United States for obscenity until a 1933 court ruling was Ulysses. Joyce’s modernist masterpiece follows Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Molly Bloom through Dublin on June 16, 1904, a single day now celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday. Its experimental styles, stream-of-consciousness narration and frank treatment of sexuality made it both influential and legally controversial.
The American journal The Little Review serialized parts of Ulysses from 1918 to 1920. Publication of the “Nausicaa” episode, which includes a scene involving masturbation, led to an obscenity prosecution under the Comstock Act. In 1921, the magazine was declared obscene, and the novel effectively became unavailable in the United States; postal authorities even seized or destroyed copies.
The turning point came when Random House imported a French edition and deliberately had a copy seized by U.S. Customs. In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, Judge John M. Woolsey ruled in 1933 that the book was not pornographic and therefore was not legally obscene. The Second Circuit affirmed the decision in 1934, allowing the novel to be published openly in the United States.