That year, William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts—Massachusetts' great settlement in the Connecticut River Valley—and the former treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote a book criticizing Puritanism entitled The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption.
Boston, founded by Puritans and, at that time ruled as a de jure theocracy, banned Pynchon's book and pressed him to return to England.
[3] The phrase "banned in Boston", however, originated in the late 19th century at a time when American moral crusader Anthony Comstock began a campaign to suppress vice.
[1] In 1961, singer/host Merv Griffin recorded a novelty song, "Banned in Boston," written by Clint Ballard Jr. and Fred Tobias, which became a modest hit.
Though his case was dismissed by a local judge and he later won a lawsuit against the Watch and Ward Society for illegal restraint of trade, the effort did little to affect censorship in Boston.
[8] The Warren Court (1953–69) expanded civil liberties and in Memoirs v. Massachusetts and other cases curtailed the ability of municipalities to regulate the content of literature, plays, and movies.
[9] Eventually the Watch and Ward Society changed its name to the New England Citizens Crime Commission, and made its main emphasis against gambling and drugs and far less on media.