The World Briefly

February 23, 2023

Scrubbing the Past

United Kingdom

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Critics and authors are accusing a British publisher of Roald Dahl’s children’s books of censorship after it removed colorful language and phrases from some of the author’s classic works to make them more acceptable to modern young readers, the Associated Press reported.

New editions of Dahl’s works have been revised to remove contentious language relating to weight, mental health, gender and race.

For example, Augustus Gloop, a gluttonous character in the 1964 book, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” is no longer “enormously fat,” just “enormous.” In the new edition of “The Witches,” a supernatural female acting as a regular woman may work as a “top scientist or running a business,” rather than a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman.”

Award-winning author Salman Rushdie criticized the rewriting as “absurd censorship.” PEN America, a US-based nonprofit organization that works to defend and promote free speech, warned that such changes “risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society.”

The Roald Dahl Story Company, which controls the rights to the books, countered that it had asked the publisher, Puffin Books, to revise the works because it wanted to ensure that Dahl’s stories will be enjoyed by all children today.

It said that any changes are “small and carefully considered.”

The alterations to Dahl’s works are the newest flashpoint in a cultural sensitivity debate: Some are trying to scrub offensive or outdated cultural, racial, and gender stereotypes from literature and other media, while others say revisions to accommodate 21st-century sensibilities risk compromising great artists’ creativity and preventing readers from addressing the world as was once perceived.

Dahl’s books have sold more than 300 million copies and have been translated into 68 languages.

Still, the renowned author, who passed away in 1990, remains a controversial figure because of the antisemitic comments he made during his lifetime and controversial elements in his works, such as describing the Oompa Loompa workers in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory as African pygmies.

The fictional characters were recast in later editions as fictional creatures from Loompaland, according to the New York Times.

In 2020, the Dahl family apologized, saying it recognized the “lasting and understandable hurt caused by Roald Dahl’s antisemitic statements.”

This story originally appeared in the February 23, 2023 newsletter, Quite the Handoff.