Most banned works, proxy-ranked by sales

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