Writers & Authors ostracized from society

I tried searching for this on the net, but apparently I don’t have the right keywords. I am looking for a list of most popular and influential authors who were expelled from society (or decapitated even) after the publication of their works. I am curious about the timeline of 1400s to 1900s (since after 1900s most of such instances were also influenced by international politics I presume).

Do you have any references or authors you can think of?

The first idea that comes to my mind is probably authors who published something on erotica or sexual topics that were considered ‘bad bad bad’ by the society.

Thinking about more such examples.

Thanks.

Dante was expelled from Florence under pain of death, but I’m not sure if that would count, as that was due to political activity.

Salman Rushdie is a very prominent one.

Ovid was exiled to the Black Sea region, quite possibly because of his Art of Love.

On a small scale, Thomas Wolfe was socially ostracized in his hometown for what he said in Look Homeward, Angel*. Similarly, Grace Metalious was socially ostracized from her home town due to Peyton Place.

Of course, Socrates chose suicide over exile, but he wasn’t really an author.

Four responses and not one name who lived between 1400 and 1900. Gotta love the internet. :smiley:

Shoot. I lost a whole post and I was planning to go to bed early.

All right, quickly.

Giordano Bruno was imprisoned and finally burned at the stake for anti-Catholic writings in 1600. Galileo suffered house arrest, if you want to count that.

Voltaire was imprisoned and exiled to England, albeit briefly, in 1726.

Donatien Alphonse-François de Sade [note from Wiki that there is no evidence he was ever entitled to the title of Marquis or indeed that he himself ever called himself the Marquis de Sade or that any of his contemporaries did] was shuffled among jails and insane asylums for 32 years of his life to keep him out of society. Jail is not exactly internal exile, but it amounted to the same thing.

Lord Byron left England, never to return, in 1817, after allegations of incest hounded him out of society. This is somewhere between a voluntary exile and being one step ahead of the dogs.

He bears a slight similarity to Victor Hugo, who hightailed it out of France in 1851 after he accused Napoleon III of being a traitor who usurped the government. He left to avoid prison or worse.

Again, numerous aristocrats of every possible field, fled France during the French Revolution exiling themselves mainly in Prussia although many went to England.

Most governments after 1400 tended to imprison or execute dangerous dissenters rather than exile them, so large numbers of exiles were people getting out while the getting was good rather than the work of governments. It was also harder to find governments willing to take in dangerous exiles.

Karl Marx got kicked out of Germany, France, and Belgium at one point or another.

I read a magazine article on the history of bible translations that mentioned many hardships endured by those associated with an unauthorized translation of the bible

Does Thomas More count?

The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was imprisoned numerous times and fled France at least once. In his case however, he was punished for his non-literary deeds, then used his prison time to write about them.

This book pretty much covers the more obvious examples, not all of whom really match the title.

Do those who were imprisoned, burned at the stake etc. for their religious writings count?

Boris Pasternak and Alexsandr Soltzehetsin were both ostracized and imprisoned for criticizing the Soviet society. And probably some other lesser known Russian writers.

Boris Pasternak certainly attracted ostracism in the Soviet Union for his literary work but he was never imprisoned for that or for any other reason.

This is actually a difficult question to answer.

“Influential” authors are by definition those who wrote something that we value today (or we wouldn’t remember them at all). An author truely rejected by all of society would sink and be forgotten quickly. You had to be popular in the first place to even be on the radar screen.

Controversial writers have always had their champions. It is hard to say that Byron or Voltaire were “ostracized by society” because they remained wildly popular, and indeed were romanticized, in some social circles despite their political troubles. Same is true for Wilde and for just about every author mentioned in this thread.

Nabokov too had defenders all through the Lolita storm.

I think you’re conflating a great number of definitions of “ostracized.” And “society.”

There is official ostracization, as is the Soviet system. Not being able to publish, or teach, or hold any official position was a common punishment for dissidents. Some of them may have achieved some level of renown anyway - whether by smuggling their works out of the country or outliving the system or exiting it for another country - but that’s not to say that the government didn’t formally suppress them.

Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, was formally punished for breaking the law. He served a standard sentence and was released. His case is controversial in many ways. He was an idiot for pressing his libel case, and the real reason he was jailed was his behavior in a variety of contexts, not just for being homosexual. But at the time it’s certainly true he was ostracized by society - at least the class society he was part of. He’s been rescued by history but his suffering was very real before his death.

Can anyone say that de Sade had a large popular following in his day? Or now? Almost everybody knows his name, but I guarantee you that hardly anybody has ever finished one of his books.

So there is the government; high society; literary society; the general public; historical knowledge. You’re putting all five into one hat.

Thanks to everyone who responded (twice to you, Expano). Enough information for me to look up and find more references on the net. I also found a lot of potential keywords to search the net for, going past the mental block on figuring out what to search for.