Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexBell
Full disclosure:
I recently uploaded The Queen of Hearts (a collection of novels written in the 1850s) by Wilkie Collins to the MR library. As well as changing 'gayety' to 'gaiety' and 'gayly' to 'gaily' I also changed 'gay' to 'light-hearted'. I did this because the English language has changed in the last 150 odd years. In our day 'a gay man' would almost certainly be read as 'a homosexual man,' and this is simply not what Collins meant - he would have used a different term if he had dared to mention a character's sexual orientation at all. I did add a note to the posting that I had updated spelling and hyphenation - I also changed 'to-day' to 'today' for example.
How does that grab you?
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Not at all favourably, I'm afraid. I want to read what the author originally wrote, not what a later "editor" has changed at a whim. Sorry, Alex - your library upload is appreciated, but speaking personally I'm not at all in favour of this type of arbitrary editing.