Letter of complaint from Patricia Weber to Macmillan Company

Published in October 1944, Kathleen Winsor’s novel Forever Amber tells the story of an ambitious young woman in Restoration-era London who advances through the social scene in a series of sexual conquests. The novel became a best-selling phenomenon in the United States, but along with its success came a campaign to ban the book in Boston and a national conversation about historical depictions of women’s sexuality and the role of religion in America’s literary discourse. In 1947, a film based on the book was released starring Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde. In this letter, college student Patricia Weber writes to express her resentment that Macmillan published a book “as depraved as Kathleen Winsor’s Forever Amber.” Though Weber shares that “I have not read the novel nor do I intend to read it,” she finds its publication “not fair,” particularly when the U.S. military was engaged in a war “for decency and clean living.”

Teach with this item from Unit 1 of the curriculum guide, Reading Dangerously: Censorship and the Freedom to Read in 20th Century America.
 

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