Agatha Christie novels reworked to remove
potentially offensive language
Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries have passages edited
by sensitivity readers for latest HarperCollins editions
Rachel Hall
@rachela_hall
Sun 26 Mar 2023
14.36 BST
Several
Agatha Christie novels have been edited to remove potentially offensive
language, including insults and references to ethnicity.
Poirot and
Miss Marple mysteries written between 1920 and 1976 have had passages reworked
or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins to strip them of language
and descriptions that modern audiences find offensive, especially those
involving the characters Christie’s protagonists encounter outside the UK.
Sensitivity
readers had made the edits, which were evident in digital versions of the new
editions, including the entire Miss Marple run and selected Poirot novels set
to be released or that have been released since 2020, the Telegraph reported.
The updates
follow edits made to books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to remove offensive
references to gender and race in a bid to preserve their relevance to modern
readers.
The
newspaper reported that the edits cut references to ethnicity, such as
describing a character as black, Jewish or Gypsy, or a female character’s torso
as “of black marble” and a judge’s “Indian temper”, and removed terms such as
“Oriental” and the N-word. The word “natives” has also been replaced with the
word “local”.
Among the
examples of changes cited by the Telegraph is the 1937 Poirot novel Death on
the Nile, in which the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children
are pestering her, saying that “they come back and stare, and stare, and their
eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I
really like children”.
This has
been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and
stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”
In the new
edition of the 1964 Miss Marple novel A Caribbean Mystery, the amateur
detective’s musing that a hotel worker smiling at her has “such lovely white
teeth” has been removed, the newspaper added.
Sensitivity
readers are a comparatively recent phenomenon in publishing that have gained
widespread attention in the past two years. They vet both new publications and
older works for potentially offensive language and descriptions, and aim to
improve diversity in the publishing industry – though some are paid extremely
low wages.
Though this
is the first time the content of Christie’s novels has been changed, her 1939
novel And Then There Were None was previously published under a different title
that included a racist term, which was last used in 1977.
Agatha
Christie Limited, a company run by the author’s great-grandson James Prichard,
is understood to handle licensing for her literary and film rights. The company
and HarperCollins have been contacted for comment.
Other
midcentury authors whose works have been revised
Roald Dahl
Dahl’s
publisher, Puffin, hired sensitivity readers to rewrite substantial parts of
the author’s text to make sure the books “can continue to be enjoyed by all
today”; however, it will also continue to print the original editions.
On the
chopping block were offensive descriptions of characters’ physical appearances,
such as the words “fat” and “ugly”, as well as antisemitic references, for
instance to the characters’ big noses in The Witches.
Gender-neutral
terms were also added – where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompas
were “small men”, they are now “small people”. The Cloud-Men in James and the
Giant Peach have become Cloud-People.
Ian Fleming
To mark 70
years since Casino Royale, Fleming’s first book featuring the British spy James
Bond, was published, a full set of the thrillers will be reissued. This time,
they will contain the disclaimer: “This book was written at a time when terms
and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were
commonplace.”
Many
changes are to remove racist language. In Live and Let Die, Bond’s comment that
would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are “pretty
law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much”
has been changed to “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought”.
Others are
to remove sexist language; for example a scene where Bond visits a nightclub in
Harlem, and a reference to the “audience panting and grunting like pigs at the
trough” has been changed to “Bond could sense the electric tension in the
room”.
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