The late-Victorian two-tier public/private publishing field was at the centre of profound social transformation tied to literacy. The bourgeoning moral majority preoccupied with protecting the morality of readers wished to quell the “pornocracy” believed to be promoted by dissolute foreigners and British aristocrats, while aristocrats were trying to hold onto traditional power. In the publishing field, translators needed to consider patterns of reader expectations while complying with discursive constraints. Bourdieu’s thoughts on the social conditions of discourse (re)production contribute to our understanding of the censorial mechanisms and the place of translations in the publishing field. Furthermore, his sociology should contribute to the development of a theory of censorship in translation.