Recently it was announced that the novels of Roald Dahl, the notoriously bigoted but gifted and enduringly popular children’s author, had been edited to eliminate words, phrases and sentiments that readers might find upsetting.
Novels such as The Witches, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach have been cleansed of negative references to a character’s appearance, race or gender. “Enormously fat” had been changed to “enormous”, “mothers” and “fathers” to the more gender-neutral “parents”. The adjective “black” was eliminated, even in reference to objects. Jokes were explained, passages modified to assure the reader that Dahl’s snarky humor was all in good fun.
