Why was James Joyce’s Ulysses once banned in the United States?

James Joyce’s novel Ulysses was banned in the United States for over a decade because it was considered prurient and obscene. Anti-obscenity groups, such as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, targeted the book due to its explicit sexuality and graphic depictions of bodily functions, including an excerpt that described a character pleasuring himself.12

During this period, U.S. courts applied the British Hicklin standard, which judged obscenity based on isolated passages rather than the work as a whole. Consequently, the U.S. Post Office seized and burned issues of The Little Review that serialized the novel, and the book itself was treated as contraband.312

The ban was finally lifted in 1934 following the landmark court case United States v. One Book Called “Ulysses” (1933). In this ruling, a New York circuit court of appeals abandoned the Hicklin standard, establishing that a publication should instead be judged by whether it has a "libidinous effect" when taken as a whole, thereby legalizing its publication in the United States.23