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Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
I agree that isn't a good change. For one, it's unnatural, who says "That old Greek scientist..."? And if the reader doesn't know who Archimedes was, informing the reader that he was an old Greek scientist doesn't give the reader useful information.
But it's an example of a change that the publisher demanded and the author went along with. It was the print world that brought this change. With a work under copyright, if a change is made, that's the only version that is going to be available. With public domain works, a changed work is going to be drowned out by the original version. If I go onto Amazon and look for a public domain book, the original version is going to be the version at the top of the search, priced at $0.00.
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Nancy Drew books were farmed out to ghostwriters by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Those original writers were handed an outline, turned in the book, and had no say and no ownership. After she took over the Syndicate, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams decided to update the books in the late '50s/early '60s. There was never a question of needing author approval--the Syndicate was the effective author.
It's not an exact parallel to the discussion of changes to public domain works, simply a real-world example of books that were deemed in need of modernization. The life was sucked out of them.