Book-burning is no new idea. This page will accumulate instances, beginning with a very old one. The most influential, perhaps, in western histories was the Justinianic destruction of the books of Origen in the sixth century.

Li Ssu was minister or puppeteer to the first Ch'in (Pinyin: Qin) dynasty monarch in the 220s BC and had a reputation for ruthlessness in his support of "Legalism" against softer-hearted Confucian traditions. I find it significant that he is credited both with regularization and stabilization of the writing system (ostensibly in the form that survives today) and with this hostility to the writings of the ancients. This report of a memorial he wrote to his king comes from a little over a hundred years later, in the Shih chi or Records of the Grand Historian of China:

In earlier times the empire disintegrated and fell into disorder, and no one was capable of unifying it. Thereupon the various feudal lords rose to power. In their discourses they all praised the past in order to disparage the present and embellished empty words to confuse the truth. Everyone cherished his own favorite school of learning and criticized what had been instituted by the authorities. But at present Your Majesty possesses a unified empire, has regulated the distinctions of black and white, and has firmly established for yourself a position of sole supremacy. And yet these independent schools, joining with each other, criticize the codes of laws and instructions. Hearing of the promulgation of a decree, they criticize it, each from the standpoint of his own school. At home they disapprove of it in their hearts; going out they criticize it in the thoroughfare. They seek a reputation by discrediting their sovereign; they apopear superior by expressing contrary views, and they lead the lowly multitude in the spreading of slander. If such license is not prohibited, the sovereign power will decline above and partisan factions will form below. It would be well to prohibit this.

Your servant suggests that all books in the imperial archives, save the memoirs of Ch'in, be burned. All persons in the empire, except members of the Academy of Learned Scholars, in possession of the Book of Odes, the Book of History, and discourses of the hundred philosophers should take them to the local governors and have them indiscriminately burned. Those who dare to talk to each other about the Book of Odes and the Book of History should be executed and their bodies exposed in the market place. Anyone referring to the past to criticize the present should, together with all members of his family, be put to death. Officials who fail to report cases that have come under their attention are equally guilty. After thirty days from the time of issuing the decree, those who have not destroyed their books are to be branded and sent to build the Great Wall. Books not to be destroyed will be those on medicine and pharmacy, divination by the tortoise and the milfoil, and agricultre and arboriculture. People wishing to pursue learning should take the officials as their teachers.