Burning books is a bad thing. It is censorship of opinions, little better than burning people for the wrong type of thinking. Both incendiary acts are often associated with religion, for example Catholics burning Protestants and associated tracts, and vice versa. More recently – in the 1980s – a fatwa was placed on Salman Rushdie by certain Muslim groups, for his book, Satanic Verses. The novel was burnt in the street, and outside mosques, including in parts of Britain.
Even more recently, there have been reports of the burning of Harry Potter books after the author, JK Rowling, was accused of transphobia when she wrote in support of women’s rights. As it happened, the ensuing publicity coincided with her book sales increasing – maybe those impulsive arsonists regretted the gesture and went out to buy fresh copies of her books, or maybe the newspaper coverage attracted a whole new generation of child readers and their parents. The book burning, in this instance, seems to have, pardon the pun, backfired.
Some books are burnt by people who think they are doing it in the best interests of the author. Lord Byron’s publisher burnt his unpublished memoirs in an attempt to protect his reputation, though think how those salacious anecdotes would have sold in later years! Gogol burnt some of his own work when ordered to by a disapproving clergyman. William Blake’s friend, who was entrusted with Blake’s papers after his death, subsequently became an evangelical Christian, and burnt Blake’s work as being too ‘heretical.’ Kafka’s friend, however, was made of different mettle. Kafka asked him to burn all his unpublished work after his death – but the friend decided against this and the literary world is duly grateful.
There are many reports of accidental burnings. When Thomas Carlyle finished his original draft of The French Revolution, he asked his friend John Stuart Mill to read it and comment on it. Unfortunately, Mill left it in his kitchen and his housekeeper used it as kindling to start the kitchen range. Mill was distraught, but Carlyle, only briefly put out, re-wrote it – and an additional two volumes – in under two years.
Not quite accidental, but even more devastating, was the fate of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s opus on German literature that he wrote during the Second World War. He actually made two copies then, having sent off one copy to his Moscow publisher, and confirmed it had arrived, he found himself out of cigarette papers. With none available in the shops, he decided to tear strips from his ‘spare’ manuscript to make cigarette rolls. Unfortunately his publisher’s office was bombed and everything in it was destroyed, but by the time the news reached Bakhtin he had smoked his entire book.
There is a lesson in all this for writers – always make and keep a copy of your manuscript. You just never know what fate might have in store.
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