Background for Fahrenheit 451

Cast
(in the order of appearance)

Fahrenheit 451 was originally published Oct. 19, 1953. Ironically, Bradbury's indictment of censorship has itself been repeatedly censored. Fourteen years after its initial release, some educators succeeded in persuading its publisher to release a special edition. This edition modified more than 75 passages to eliminate certain words, and to "cleanup" two incidents in the book (a minor character, for example, was changed from "drunk" to "sick"). When Bradbury learned of the changes, he demanded that the publishers withdraw the censored version, and they complied. Since 1980, only Bradbury's original text has been available. As a result, some schools have banned the book from course lists. Through all these attempts to sanitize or banish it completely, Bradbury has remained diligent in his defense of his masterpiece, writing in a coda that appears in some editions of the book:

Do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.