James Joyce's letter to Ezra Pound "opened by censor"

This “opened by censor” envelope contained a letter from James Joyce to Ezra Pound. In the letter, Joyce discusses his novel, Ulysses, which was effectively banned in the United States until 1933. Postal censorship is common during wartime; when this letter was sent during World War I, the newly legislated Espionage Act of 1917 allowed government bodies to open items of mail if they posed a threat to American military operations. The extent to which such laws repress freedom of speech has been extensively debated since.

Pound was instrumental in the publication of Ulysses: he was coeditor of The Little Review and also helped to place the novel in The Egoist, both of which were serializing it. Both journals were soon censored. The United States Postal Service refused to handle three issues of The Little Review, and in October 1920, the editors were charged with obscenity. Publication of Ulysses abruptly halted with their conviction the following spring. Possibly to protest the censorship of the book, American publisher Samuel Roth later published unauthorized—and unintentionally defective—versions serially (beginning in 1922) and as a book (1929). Pound, who regarded the law under which Ulysses was suppressed as outrageous, had approved Roth’s initial project; however, he as well as Joyce strongly condemned the 1929 edition, which Roth published under a false imprint, leading to his imprisonment.