Roald Dahl Children's Books Being Rewritten

[issybird]

The link in itself, as what was visible on the board, was benign. The quotation was not. There are options to engage that didn't involve posting it. As for not raising eyebrows, that presumes people clicked on it, jumped through hoops, and read it. AND gave tacit approval. Sometimes people choose not to engage. I myself did not read it. And please in the future take questions about moderation to PM. Thanks.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Sometimes they get rejected by all the major publishers and make a small publisher and the author millions.

I think that's how some bigger PRH imprints got started. Their famous founding editors were some combination of preternaturally attuned to public taste, good at (working with the author!) improving manuscripts, and lucky.

Whether a sensitivity editor will go down in literary history as anywhere near that successful it is too soon to know for sure, but I hope and predict: No.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Whether a sensitivity editor will go down in literary history as anywhere near that successful it is too soon to know for sure, but I hope and predict: No.

I think sensitivity readers are going to be a short lived phenomena. At least at the big publishing houses. The rightsholders and publishers are doing this because they think it is what people want. But the glaring lack of support for these changes from anybody should show there was no real call for any of it.

And once these works fall into the public domain, the original editions will return.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I think sensitivity readers are going to be a short lived phenomena. At least at the big publishing houses. The rightsholders and publishers are doing this because they think it is what people want. But the glaring lack of support for these changes from anybody should show there was no real call for any of it.

And once these works fall into the public domain, the original editions will return.

Short lived, unfortunately, is a lifetime plus 70 years away. So, neither you nor me will see the end of it. We shall see if it is a trend or a fad.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Short lived, unfortunately, is a lifetime plus 70 years away. So, neither you nor me will see the end of it.

Not sure what you mean there.

A Wodehouse book originally published in 1930 that is sensitivity reader-ed to death will still fall in the public domain in two years. Putting out a revised edition of a book doesn't reset the clock. It starts a new clock for that new edition. But the original will still become PD on schedule.

As to whether this is a trend or a fad: notice these all hit in a fairly short time and none of them have been met positively. Sensitivity readers for old works are the 3D TV of the publishing world.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Not sure what you mean there.

A Wodehouse book originally published in 1930 that is sensitivity reader-ed to death will still fall in the public domain in two years. Putting out a revised edition of a book doesn't reset the clock. It starts a new clock for that new edition. But the original will still become PD on schedule.

As to whether this is a trend or a fad: notice these all hit in a fairly short time and none of them have been met positively. Sensitivity readers for old works are the 3D TV of the publishing world.

Right, if you mean the original. Since it happens to alive authors and works that are in no hurry to become PD, it is a mixed bag. There has to be _some_ that like the idea. I am not sure who. I would assume they just avoid anything from known "offenders."

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Right, if you mean the original.

Of course I mean the original. What? Are you going to complain that the books are being bowdlerize and you have to wait seventy years for the bowdleized versions to hit PD?

One old lady says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

Since it happens to alive authors and works that are in no hurry to become PD, it is a mixed bag.

Not sure how many alive authors that does happen to. But I won't say it NEVER happens. On the other hand, thanks to their aliveness those authors will eventually get the rights back and rectify the situation.

See Stephen King's The Stand, David Wingrove's Chung Kuo, Ricardo Pinto's The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, or just anything that is labelled Author's Preferred.

There has to be _some_ that like the idea. I am not sure who. I would assume they just avoid anything from known "offenders."

"Some" people like any stupid thing you put in front of them: Four in five Americans favor democracy over dictatorship

I would guess those that favor these changes aren't likely to be reading Wodehouse, Christie or any of these authors in the first place

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Not sure what you mean there.

A Wodehouse book originally published in 1930 that is sensitivity reader-ed to death will still fall in the public domain in two years.

In the U.S., and in the Life + 50 countries, that is about right (1/1/2026).

In Life + 70 U.K, I think the PD date is 2046-01-01 for everything Wodehouse wrote. And it may be that the revisions are for the U.K. and Ireland only.

[Kindleing]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

In Life + 70 U.K, I think the PD date is 2046-01-01 for everything Wodehouse wrote. And it may be that the revisions are for the U.K. and Ireland only.

That may be the case for Wodehouse, but Amazon US is already selling Bowdlerized Christie books for Kindle. The other day I bought Death on the Nile hoping to beat the changeover, but no such luck. A search on two of the edited words mentioned in a newspaper article turned up neither, so it must be new. I decided not to return it since the only way to read the original version would be to buy a used paperback from somewhere. I don't want to start buying paperbacks again.

The thing that really gripse me is there is no way to know what is being delivered from the Amazon description. They list the publication date as 2005, but that description is from a paperback published by William Morrow Paperbacks. Even in the ebook itself, you have to get to the end of the copyright/printing history to find:

Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-176017-4
Version 12292021bcm

I haven't read the book yet but a quick scan hasn't turned up any
mention that the book isn't original. The newspaper article said, among other changes, the words "oriental" and "Nubian" have been removed; a search did not turn up these words so I assume this is the Bowdlerized version. I have no idea what other changes were made.

The copyright date of 2020 indicates this has been going on longer than I realized. Consequently, I will no longer be buying any Agatha Christie books.

[hildea]

Artists' works have been changed, both by themselves and others, both before and after publication, to avoid offending audience and/or sponsors for a long time, and I don't see any reason that would change. The first example I can remember hearing of is Molière in 1600s (a few more examples in this post), but I'm sure there are many, many cases before that.

Originally Posted by Kindleing

The thing that really gripse me is there is no way to know what is being delivered from the Amazon description.
...
I have no idea what other changes were made.

I agree, this kind of thing is annoying. If I were dictator of the world all publishers would keep a change log for each book they published with information about what had been changed in each edition, and each bookseller would state clearly which edition each book was, with a link to that change log.

Personally, I don't mind many of these changes (I don't really need Christie's original casual racism to be included, for instance), but I'd like to know what I'm reading.

The copyright date of 2020 indicates this has been going on longer than I realized.

Yes, I think this is very, very usual and has been going on since forever, but it seems like there's a storm of it now because newspapers have discovered that writing indignantly about a fairly routine part of book publishing generates a lot of outrage and clicks.

[SomeSteve]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Otherwise I'm not familiar with that paper ...

That is, The Spectator.

I'm not familiar with it either, except for the name. I didn't pay attention to any of the links on the page, just as I don't pay attention to ads scattered all over the place. I just thought it was a good article that might interest others, and I agreed with most of what she wrote.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

...I agreed with most of what she wrote.

Eh, we (the article writer and I) both dislike the effect, but we disagree on the cause.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

That is, The Spectator.

I'm not familiar with it either, except for the name. I didn't pay attention to any of the links on the page, just as I don't pay attention to ads scattered all over the place. I just thought it was a good article that might interest others, and I agreed with most of what she wrote.

If that's the UK Spectator it's mostly a right-leaning Conservative party mouthpiece.

Andrew

[SomeSteve]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

If that's the UK Spectator it's mostly a right-leaning Conservative party mouthpiece.

Andrew

I associated it with names learned way back when in school, The Tatler and The Spectator, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, from the 1700s, and somehow assumed it had been carrying on since then, but apparently today's Spectator has nothing to do with that one.