Pepys' books

Arnold Hunt on three new Pepys books. I am very keen to read Kate Loveman's, though irked to see that because the CU library has digital access I will not be able to request a "real" copy from BorrowDirect! Here is a good bit from the review, describing the letter C. S. Lewis wrote in support of the publication of an unexpurgated edition of the diary: Lewis’s letter is a fascinating period piece: writing in June 1960, a few months before the Lady Chatterley trial, he urged the Fellows of Magdalene not to be deterred by the risk of public scandal or ridicule. “A spiteful or merely jocular journalist could certainly make us for a week or two very malodorous in the public nostril. But a few weeks, or years, are nothing in the life of the College. I think it would be pusillanimous and unscholarly to delete a syllable on that score.”

Contraband

At the LRB, Anne Enright on the history of literary censorship in Ireland.

Getting out the protractor

Kira Cochrane at the Guardian on the history of the British Board of Film Classification:

In 1916, the board's president, TP O'Connor, drew up a list of 43 grounds for deletion. These included indecorous dancing, unnecessary exhibition of underclothing, subjects dealing with premeditated seduction of girls, the effects of vitriol throwing, and materialisation of the conventional figure of Christ.

Closing tabs

Crossing borders makes us all vulnerable.

"One of the rarest - and most expensive - TSR products"!

Have a browser full of open tabs re: journal articles for thoughts I want to jot down this weekend on formalism and literary study.  Also: two meals today with family and close friends that make me very grateful for good health and fellowship, perennial insomnia problems notwithstanding!

Proxy battles

The Cute Cat Theory of Internet Censorship. (Courtesy of Amy.)