Banned Books Week 2018On Thursday evening (27 September), Fiona Oliver (Curator NZ and Pacific Publi
Banned Books Week 2018On Thursday evening (27 September), Fiona Oliver (Curator NZ and Pacific Publications), Anthony Tedeschi (Curator Rare Books and Fine Printing) and Mary Skarott (Research Librarian Children’s Literature), will present a good-humoured survey of some of the controversial and banned publications from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Children’s Collection. Among the items chosen from the Rare Books and Fine Printing Collection is the Liber chronicarum (1493), known more commonly as the Nuremberg Chronicle. The book came under censorship from the Holy See for its inclusion of an engraving depicting Pope Joan and her child (leaf clxix verso). According to the legend, Joan disguised herself as a man and was elected Pope in 855. She was discovered when her water broke during a papal procession and she died shortly after giving birth to a son. Pope Joan was believed to be a historical figure until the early-17th century when Pope Clement VIII refuted the story. The pope’s refutation - along with other criticism - resulted in the account and image of Pope Joan being excised, pasted over or otherwise defaced in a number of copies of the Liber chronicarum.Other books being shown during the Banned Books event include: the first editions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) and Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), the 1928 first edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover published in Italy and Thomas Bowdler’s The family Shakespeare (1874 edition). -- source link
#rare books#censorship#banned books#incunabula#pope joan