Bishops have often led the way with British book burning: in 1599 the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London prohibited the publication of various satirical works, and had several of them burned at Stationers’ Hall in the so-called “Bishops’ Bonfire”. Later on, in a more civilised era, the Bishop of Wakefield, Walsham How, had to content himself with publicly announcing that he had thrown his copy of Thomas Hardy’s Jude The Obscure (1895) into his own fireplace, because of its “insolence and indecency”.

Book burning has not just been the preserve of governments and clerics, however: rampaging mobs have often gone in for it too. During the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the townspeople shouted “Away with the learning of clerks [ie. scholars], away with it!” as they ransacked Cambridge University and burned books and papers. The anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 saw a mob burn down the house of Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, including his library – it is said that they were particularly incensed when they saw his extensive collection of books by Alexander Pope, and mistook them for works by the Pontiff. 

On the other hand, mobs could collectively turn against book burning. In the 18th Century it was common for seditious works to be burned by the public hangman; but when this was attempted with a pamphlet by the reformer John Wilkes in 1763, a mob of 500 attacked the hangman and rescued the work, before rioting. 

The sad truth is that book burning seems to have been instigated, or at least relished, by intelligent people and even scholars more often than by illiterate mobs. In 1683 the convocation of Oxford University voted to burn the works of John Milton, and one eyewitness reported that the academics watching the spectacle of the combusting books were positively jaunty: “scholars of all degrees and qualities surrounding the fire, gave several hums whilst they were burning.”