Term Papers on Tropic Of Cancer

Term Paper Title	Tropic Of Cancer
# of Words	1504
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	6.02

Tropic of Cancer

Since its publishing in 1934 by Obelisk Press in Paris, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller has been the object at over 60 attempts to subdue this novel as obscene. For almost thirty years, the book was barred from import into the United States by the federal Tariff Act of 1930. In 1961, Grove Press, with the Supreme Court decision to allow publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, decided to publish Tropic of Cancer in hardback. Once published, it was sold in stores as hardback without incident. In late 1961, a small book publisher planned to release a paperback version of the book without authorization from Henry Miller. This resulted in a settlement and an early paperback publication by Grove Press. Special interest groups, at the time, especially targeted paperbacks’ obsceneness due to its low price and its being readily available to minors. What followed was a flurry of unofficial and eventually official banning of the book, not on a federal scale, but on a local and state sca!
le. Thus, Tropic of Cancer, for several years was constantly scrutinized on a large scale by small contestants.
Right from its initial publication in 1934, Tropic of Cancer immediately felt the wrath of censors in the form of the Tariff Act of 1930. The first copies that were brought into America from France were immediately confiscated under the context of the Tariff Act. This act gives empowerment to U.S. Customs officials that find any material imported to confiscate the material if deemed obscene. After seizure, it is brought before a federal judge who then make the decision of any obscenity. If and when materials seized are deemed obscene than that       particular material is effectively removed from the American market.
The act states:
All persons are prohibited from importing into the United States                                  from any foreign country…any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing,           advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast, instrument, or other article which is obscene or immoral, or any drug or medicine or any article whatever for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion… No such articles whether imported separately or contained in packages with other goods entitled to entry, shall be admitted entry; and all such articles and, unless it appears to the satisfaction of the collector that the obscene or other prohibited articles contained in the package were enclosed therein without the knowledge or consent of the importer, owner, agent, or consignee, the entire contents of the package in which such articles are contained, shall be subject to seizure and forfeiture a!
s hereinafter  provided…(Encyclopedia of Censorship 341)


In 1934, United States customs, citing the Tariff Act, seized the book and took it to court which promptly ruled that it was obscene. The copy that was seized was burned and all other attempts at importing the book were stamped out.
The Tariff Act of 1930 had been successful in preventing the import of Tropic of Cancer from the time of its publication in 1934 right until its American debut by Grove Press in 1961. The Tariff Act was upheld eight years prior to its American debut and Grove Press used the Roth Standard as its basis for publishing the book (The Roth Standard was the earlier decision by the federal courts that set standards on what was and was not constitutionally obscene). The federal agencies, with the Lady Chatterley decision weighing in, came to the conclusion that Tropic of Cancer was not obscene in the constitutional sense(Rembar 168). This meant that there was to be no intervention from the Post office, nor the Customs office. This was most likely taken on the advice from the Department of Justice(168). The flurry of disputes were to come from the local and state sector. Ultimately, Tropic of Cancer had been judged obscene in five states: Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, an!
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