The Banning of <em>Redheap:</em> Sober Facts about an Inflammatory Fiction

Abstract

The banning of Norman Lindsay's novel Redheap in 1930 was a controversial decision at the time and has been the subject of much commentary by historians, biographers and journalists. Since the 1960s there have been some half dozen contradictory explanations for the decision, ranging from standard operating procedure in the Department of Trade and Customs to the personal intervention of Lindsay's mother. In this paper, I outline the various theories, identify their fallacies and comment critically on the tendency for secondary accounts to repeat the claims of previous writers, no matter how erroneous or improbable, with no attempt at verification. In the first part, I outline the contending theories as to the origins and cause of the ban; the second part is a brief narrative of the affair; in the third part, I evaluate the theories and make a judgement as to which accounts come closest to the truth. I conclude that none of the accounts is satisfactory and that the explanation for the ban is to be found in the policies and attitudes of the government officials and politicians involved in the case.