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Originally Posted by Catlady
Before publication, the editor and the writer can do whatever the heck they want to massage the manuscript. After publication? No. It IS holy writ, unless the author vets any changes or decides to rewrite for a new edition, clearly stating that he or she is doing so in the new edition.
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You're welcome to avoid all new editions of PD works; many publishers regularly edit them. Punctuation is changed to the new standards, phrasing that would now be incomprehensible is shifted, and slang terms are substituted for more modern ones. Italics may be added or removed. Whole sections might be removed to make a condensed version more accessible to children.
For a very long time, authors accepted that editors would change their works a bit, and that was part of the cost of publication. Ever new edition was likely to be tweaked. Public domain works can not only be republished at will, but edited, translated, derivatives made, adapted to other media entirely.
You don't have to like it, but railing against one of the foundations of the literary publications industry isn't likely to win you a lot of support.
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And this discussion points out why there's something a little bit frightening about e-books. They are too easily altered. Frankly, I'm now going to go back to Project Gutenberg for some of the books I've downloaded from MR, because I no longer feel confident of what I'm getting from MR.
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Books were always easily altered--by publishers, who often didn't tell *anyone*--not the author, and not the public--what changes had been made.. The range of publishers has just opened up to a lot more people.
There is no "original, pristine book." The version the author sent to the publisher isn't the version that went to press. It's laughable to say that it's okay to accept edits the author was miserably unhappy with at the time, but was locked into a contract, but it's not okay to make further edits later without direct consent. Plenty of books get edited without author consent. Edits done under contract for the purpose of driving sales are no more ethical and true to the original art than edits done 80 years later with an eye for the current potential readership.