Top list

Most banned works, proxy-ranked by sales

Page 2 of 5

This ranking is still a proxy. For now it sorts the current corpus by estimated copies sold, while the long-term plan is to rank by breadth, duration, and population affected by government bans.

  1. 21
    Fanny Hill

    John Cleland • 1748

    5,000,000 estimated copies
  2. 22
    The Communist Manifesto

    Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels • 1848

    5,000,000 estimated copies
  3. 23
    The Decameron

    Giovanni Boccaccio • c. 1353

    5,000,000 estimated copies
  4. 24
    Candide

    Voltaire • 1759

    4,000,000 estimated copies
  5. 25
    Little Black Sambo

    Helen Bannerman • 1899

    4,000,000 estimated copies
  6. 26
    The Story of Ferdinand

    Munro Leaf • 1936

    4,000,000 estimated copies
  7. 27
    American Psycho

    Bret Easton Ellis • 1991

    3,000,000 estimated copies
  8. 28
    Forever Amber

    Kathleen Winsor • 1944

    3,000,000 estimated copies
  9. 29
    Ivanhoe

    Walter Scott • 1819

    3,000,000 estimated copies
  10. 30
    Lady Chatterley's Lover

    D. H. Lawrence • 1928

    3,000,000 estimated copies
  11. 31
    The Gulag Archipelago

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn • 1973

    3,000,000 estimated copies
  12. 32
    The Master and Margarita

    Mikhail Bulgakov • 1967

    3,000,000 estimated copies
  13. 33
    Leaves of Grass

    Walt Whitman • 1855

    2,000,000 estimated copies
  14. 34
    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn • 1962

    2,000,000 estimated copies
  15. 35
    The Anarchist Cookbook

    William Powell • 1971

    2,000,000 estimated copies
  16. 36
    The Jungle

    Upton Sinclair • 1906

    2,000,000 estimated copies
  17. 37
    The Naked and the Dead

    Norman Mailer • 1948

    2,000,000 estimated copies
  18. 38
    The Prince

    Niccolo Machiavelli • 1532

    2,000,000 estimated copies
  19. 39
    The Sorrows of Young Werther

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • 1774

    2,000,000 estimated copies
  20. 40
    The Satanic Verses

    Salman Rushdie • 1988

    1,500,000 estimated copies