Century After It Was Banned, Place of Honor for Twain Tale

CHARLTON, Mass. — It took only 105 years, but “Eve’s Diary” is back on the shelf.

Richard Whitehead was researching his new role as a trustee of the public library here when he stumbled on an old, forgotten controversy about the book, Mark Twain’s sly interpretation of the Adam and Eve story.

In 1906, he learned, the library’s trustees voted to ban “Eve’s Diary” because the illustrations, by Lester Ralph, showed a naked (though not graphically so) Eve exploring the wonders of Eden.

“There’s nothing outrageous about them,” Mr. Whitehead said. “It’s kind of a shame that for what seems to me like very good artwork, a great piece of literature was banned.”

1. The book was among 100 that the small Charlton Public Library added to its collection that year, and the only one that the trustees — the town clerk, a minister and an undertaker — found objectionable. Newspapers around the country wrote with amusement or indignation about the ban, with The New York Times reporting on Nov. 24, 1906, that the town’s librarian, one Hattie L. Carpenter, had perused the Twain book before putting it into circulation and informed Frank Wakefield, a trustee, that she “had her doubts.”...