Need to add "is a bowdlerization of" to work relationships

I'm thinking particularly of the recently-in-the-news edits to Roald Dahl books and to Ian Fleming books, which were clearly not done by the authors. None of the relationships listed in https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/HelpThing:Work/Relationships really fit. And I expect there will be more bowdlerizations in the future, so the category may become well-used. I think some editions of Beatrix Potter's works were bowdlerized also, decades ago. (Peter's father was put in a pie by Mrs. MacGregor, and that was viewed as being a little too real for modern children.)

>1 themulhern: "Is an adaptation of" fits just fine... (in the "for a different audience" subclause).

Otherwise we will end up in a never ending debacle of where adaptations end and bowdlerization start.

Don't forget Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer

>3 gilroy: I wasn't aware those had been hit.

>2 AnnieMod: Criteria for bowdlerization are simple: the book is a stealth adaptation, the words are changed but the fact that this has happened is not made clear anywhere. Maybe adaptation relationship with an extra tag of some sort would work.

>5 themulhern: Some adaptations are not revealed as adaptations for a long time… Changing the author text is an adaptation for me - regardless if the change is revealed or not.

Now… don’t get me started on translations - each translation is an adaptation and some are closer to bowdlerization than actual adaptation, let alone translation. But that’s part of the “reading in translation” risk. :)

It sounds like it would be impossible to keep the bowdlerized edition separate in any case since the title won't be different

>7 jjwilson61:

There’s lots of cases where people try and keep different versions of works (full texts and abridgements, frex) despite the title being identical, so a bowdlerization relationship would create no new difficulties on that front.

I’m not sure I see the need for a separate relationship, though, adaption of seems fitting enough to me. The nature of the adaption would be stated in the disambiguation notice.

>8 AndreasJ: Well, that might work. Hopefully the hard working LT crowd will be able to keep up.

And now Agatha Christie is being attacked:
https://deadline.com/2023/03/agatha-christie-hercule-poirot-miss-marple-classic-...

Yes how dare they revise Agatha Christie for the 1000th time. They should only be allowed to publish her original versions, with the n-word as God intended.

>11 norabelle414: They should. They are product of their time and author, warts and all, but let's not expect contemporary readers to use their brain and judgment when the alternative is publicity boom for what is essentially a bunch of inane alterations. Pretty sure readers worldwide will be traumatized with the word 'spinster' and it is to be replaced with 'an empowered single woman'.

>5 themulhern:

Criteria for bowdlerization are simple: the book is a stealth adaptation, the words are changed but the fact that this has happened is not made clear anywhere.

Where did you find this description? Bowdler himself advertised his edition of Shakespeare far and wide as suitable to "family" readings. Other examples followed suit--the whole point was to attract the readership by trumpeting the changes, not hiding them. There is nowhere mention of the practice being "stealth" and hidden in the several dictionary definitions I just looked at either.

>12 SandraArdnas:

Pretty sure readers worldwide will be traumatized with the word 'spinster' and it is to be replaced with 'an empowered single woman'.

Actually, one could make a case for replacing "spinster" and similar archaic terms based on sociology. If the fundamental meaning is agreed to be "an unmarried woman", it's nonetheless clear that what that meant in, say, the 13th, 17th, 19th centuries up to our days has changed a lot--so much so that a whole history book might be needed to explain the differences, and why the term that was once descriptive of a) an unmarried woman's main domestic chore b) marital status, is today only c) a misogynistic slur.

Of course, there is no mandate to update old texts for modern use. The only reason this is happening, outside the classrooms (where some of the most vocal defenders of the "freedom of speech" are the same people banning books in hundreds, go figure), is pure and simple lucre.

And here you really ought to take on board, for once, that people other-than-whites, other-than-male etc. not only exist, but are in a global majority that continues to increase.

This means, if you want to go into the business of flipping junk like Christie's "Golden Age" mysteries (super-bestsellers AND out of copyright), you may want to take note that you can't count on the old dominant book-buying demographic of (Casual) White Supremacists. That's becoming a niche market, and publishers have already opted out of it when they started cleaning her and others up post-WWII (actually stealthily, and not prompted by any sort of "wokeism", "political correctness", or similar leftist afflictions worse than the plague and cholera put together).

To be sure, that's not the only reason Christie sells today--but it is part of the winning formula, at least for those looking to sell or buy no more than some pleasant entertainment.

>13 LolaWalser: No, one couldn't make a case based on sociology or anything else, unless one feels human beings are sheep, rather than intelligent beings. I'd appreciate if modern day fundamentalists stopped feeling so righteous about imposing their own views as the right ones. It is precisely because of connotations 'spinster' has that it should stay and it was clear from my example I'm perfectly aware what those are and not in need of a lesson. Perhaps it's time you took on board your opinion is only your opinion and not the only valid one.

>14 SandraArdnas:

The (misogynistic) connotations of "spinster" that it holds today have accrued over centuries and your insistence that it should be read with them (because YOUR opinion's the only valid one?) is devoid of a sense of history and context: in a word, ignorant. So I repeat: yes, a case can be made for translating such terms into more accurate, transparent ones today.

This isn't some radical new proposal--it falls squarely under the translations and modernisations that have been done routinely ever since the first "ancients & moderns" quarrels. Not only most people don't read, say, Shakespeare's or Chaucer's original English, but more recent modernisations take over older ones! The process is ongoing, and will last as long as a language lives.

As for sheep, readers don't pop into life "intelligent". To be able to read a text is an acquired, not inborn skill. The more time passes the more information we need to clue us in on the past. It's enough to hear what sort of questions teachers are getting even at the university level to understand that historical context--social AND linguistic--is largely missing.

>15 LolaWalser: The accurate one is the one author wrote, that's the only accurate one. Everything else is rewriting, which is a legitimate option if it is labeled as such. It is, however, no longer the work it purports to be in the current practice. Just as they publish easy readers and such, they can publish sanitized versions for those who want their literary history sanitized, but for those who don't and would rather read it as it was, it really shouldn't be a research project to discover where they can find one. I fail to see how literature is any different than any other area where history is not to be rewritten, but perhaps that's the next project of enlightening the masses in line with a particular ideological stance. Once rewriting fiction is commonplace, we could move on to essays, than historic documents, perhaps we could edit undesirable elements in personal correspondence of historic public figures. Sky is the limit how we could rewrite our history in line with current moral vogue.

As for spinster in particular, I am a linguist. Those connotations are a part of the text, by removing them, you are writing a different text. It is not merely modernizing. You're not changing 'thou' to 'you', you're removing historical context because it is unpleasant. If the aim is to actually know something about that historical context and have generations for whom the word is increasingly more archaic understand it, than you need it there. It is on its way to archaic precisely because social mores have changed, but at the time of Christie's writing, they were very much alive and kicking. Similarly, if one were to write a historical novel today about times when it was common, it would carry that meaning, unlike any modern word for single woman.

Regarding sheep, it refers to underlying assumption that readers are incapable of their own judgement and should thus be fed appropriate sanitized versions, or else, I don't know, they be led astray into sin. It has nothing to do with inborn or acquired skill. It has to do whether you believe they should acquire those skills through reading or whether someone else must steer them in the right direction like a pastor his flock.

I don't see this as a need, but I imagine it could be useful.

However, I see the addition of "Is a bowdlerization" to work relationships causing confusion. The first problem is the word.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bowdlerize

I recommend "expurgation" or "censored version" instead of the word referring to Thomas Bowdler's editions.

A concern I had on first thought is that the label relies on the helper knowing the intention of the publisher. On further thought, does it matter? Someone more knowledgeable can change the work relationship at any time. But then there's the question what type of consensus LT members would come to.

Example: I would like to see how this would apply to Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (originally published in 1952, not 1947, according to the reputable sources). The diary exists as multiple versions, the more popular (earlier versions?) missing aspects of the writer's explorations of her sexuality, relationships, and imagination. It's currently set as "an abridged version of" Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (1995? despite what's in CK). But, look, there's disagreement about everything to do with these works already.

This is bringing up for me the problem of original publication, especially for translations. Many, many translations into English have been censored to remove "morally offensive" materials over hundreds of years. The versions without sex scenes; same-gender romances; mentions of divorce, menstruation, genitalia (not stimulated), or other "vulgar" topics; or the original religious symbolism are usually what English readers know. Oftentimes, the uncensored versions aren't officially translated. Will popular censored works be considered expurgations of the obscured originals?

By the way, when allowed by distributors, there are self-publishing authors who expurgate their own works for increased sales. I'm amused at the idea that the "clean" versions should be labeled almost as derivatives of the erotic or transgressive versions, which are frequently banned or "dungeoned" after publication.

(Posted yesterday from too small a screen. Revised when I could view my post on a larger screen.)

>16 SandraArdnas: Right on.

>13 LolaWalser: I invented that definition, for the current situation. Kind of like current meaning of "boycott" has little relation to the original Boycott person.

>17 aspirit: "censored version" would be fine w/ me. Maybe "bowdlerization" is too literary.

Sherlock Holmes "ejaculates" quite a bit*. Perhaps the stealth editors will be coming for Conan Doyle next?

* to utter suddenly and vehemently

>21 themulhern: swapping out a word for a synonymous phrase would not change the text enough for the revision to be considered by the majority of CK helpers to be a separate work.

If you are concerned about the censoring of Sherlock Holmes books, then you might be interested to know what's been challenged already. Study in Scarlet was reportedly removed by a Virginian school district in 2011 from select reading lists, increasing the minimum age restriction to seventh graders (12-and 13-year-olds), in response to a parent's complaint about Arthur Conan Doyle's portrayal of Mormons.

Revising Watson's first mystery with Holmes to remove religiously offensive content could create a substantially different work. Anyone could publish a version like that in the USA without permission; the original entered public domain at the start of this year.

>17 aspirit:: "This is bringing up for me the problem of original publication, especially for translations. Many, many translations into English have been censored to remove "morally offensive" materials over hundreds of years. The versions without sex scenes; same-gender romances; mentions of divorce, menstruation, genitalia (not stimulated), or other "vulgar" topics; or the original religious symbolism are usually what English readers know. Oftentimes, the uncensored versions aren't officially translated. Will popular censored works be considered expurgations of the obscured originals?

I predict edit wars when English translations of the Bible are labelled as bowdlerisations of the Hebrew Bible. Some people's immutable word of YHWH, a bowdlerisation? Yep.

While I get this, the more general word adaptation seems enough to me. (Also bowdlerization wouldn't really work in an international context - way too Anglo specific).

>22 aspirit: Yup. Study in Scarlet is intense, and Arthur Conan Doyle was still very much in historical novel mode when he wrote that book.

The idea of sensitivity readers revising the Oxford English Dictionary makes my head explode.

>17 aspirit: Translations from one recognized language to another are identified in LibraryThing, aren't they? It's an acknowledge relationship. What I'm talking about here, like w/ the Dahl books, is also a kind of translation, from the English (say) that the author used then, to the English that the sensitivity readers rejoice in now. So translation would work, but only if you defined different varieties of the same language.

>27 themulhern: Not really - they are not relationships - we just mush them together into the work thus declaring them the same text. And some translations are more adaptations than translations really... Keeping track of that and keeping them as separate works defeats the point of the work system. But then this is a common issue with translations and texts anyway:)

>28 AnnieMod: I guess that's where LT went wrong ;-> Would have been better to keep translations distinct.

A point that may have been elided; I have nothing against honest adaptations for any reason or none at all. As an example, Joan Vinge adapted Tarzan of the Apes and the book was published under her name and a slightly different title, Tarzan, King of the Apes. There was a prologue explaining what she loved and hated about the original. The book was truncated, so that it ends just as Tarzan sets out to seek out other humans. It was an honest adaptation, by an honest human being, who honestly put her name to the honest work that honestly represented itself as an honest adaptation. The books with surreptitious changes, that represent themselves as being no different, are the problem.

>24 Nicole_VanK: Yeah. I kind of agree w/ bowdlerization not being a good choice. I guess I'm just too literary.

>16 SandraArdnas:

The accurate one is the one author wrote, that's the only accurate one.

+

As for spinster in particular, I am a linguist. Those connotations are a part of the text, by removing them, you are writing a different text.

Contradicting yourself again. Which is it going to be? Maybe calm down and think through about the argument you're addressing instead of fighting some dumbass culture war by proxy.

For the last time: the connotations of "spinster" that the word has today are not the same across centuries*. There are thousands of examples like that. USAGE CHANGES. So if you wish to abide by your first sentence, you better pay attention to--I repeat--history and context.

*Or cultures. English "spinster" isn't entirely co-terminous with, say, Italian "zitella", or Spanish "soltera" etc.

Once rewriting fiction is commonplace, we could move on to essays, than historic documents, perhaps we could edit undesirable elements in personal correspondence of historic public figures. Sky is the limit how we could rewrite our history in line with current moral vogue.

Are you paid by the hour to manufacture outrage over nothing? Modernisations don't kill the original text, they are merely a testament to changing culture. Old English is replaced by Modern English (of, say, the 17th century), which is inevitably then superseded by the 19th, 21st... so what? It's either that, or limit readership (already a small minority) to experts.

You're not changing 'thou' to 'you', you're removing historical context because it is unpleasant.

First, not that it matters hugely, but you've mixed up examples--Christie's work was mentioned in relation to racism (the fact that, to give ONE example, her original title with "niggers" has been modified since the forties), and you introduced, derisively, the hypothetical example of spinster being replaced by "empowered single women". I pointed out that "spinster" is in fact becoming increasingly obscure, such that (given the trend in modern readership, which is not toward increased historical and linguistic awareness) it would soon need aids to comprehend. My issue with "spinster" regards accuracy and transparency of communication.

To go to the example which does in fact address unpleasant historical contexts, Christie's (and similar) more or less casual racism... take it up with the publishers. Who are not doing this to please the extreme left, but to make a buck--or more precisely, to CONTINUE making bucks--off of this fare, in a world that has changed a lot since 1922.

They want to sell a maximum number of books to maximum people, so they remove the nastiest reminders of White Supremacy. Moral? "Don't depend on learning history from pulp fiction" might be one.

underlying assumption that readers are incapable of their own judgement and should thus be fed appropriate sanitized versions, or else, I don't know, they be led astray into sin. It has nothing to do with inborn or acquired skill. It has to do whether you believe they should acquire those skills through reading or whether someone else must steer them in the right direction like a pastor his flock.

Oh, come off it. You are disingenuously eliding the role of guides in even beginning to be a reader, from parents to school and teachers. And yes, we do need teachers far beyond our horizons, especially when it comes to issues like racism, misogyny and every sort of intolerance.

>26 themulhern:

Does the fact that they had "a rabid feminist" be an example of usage of "rabid", or that as late as 2019 (at least) some of the synonyms for "woman" on offer included "hussy", "filly" and "baggage" make your head explode too?

Otoh, "a rabid anti-feminist" has a nice ring of truth about it.

>31 themulhern:

I kind of agree w/ bowdlerization not being a good choice. I guess I'm just too literary.

Not literary enough.

>32 LolaWalser: I am not contradicting myself at all. You're so inundated with ideology, you can't see beyond it. I'll leave you to it.

>27 themulhern: I think this post highlights that you are unfamiliar with the work-to-work relationship feature on LibraryThing. "Is a translation of" / "Is translated from" is not one of the options.

I don't think it should be.

The translations I'm thinking of are what AnnieMod said: "more adaptations than translations really". Works are adapted during translation for a variety of reasons but frequently for the same reason (as I understand it) Bowdler adapted Shakespeare's works. These weren't really translations. For example, replacing sex scenes in a Chinese tales with the characters meeting for tea for UK readers is not "translation". English readers have no clue what "tea" represents in these stories until a reader of the original version tells us what was replaced.

As I see it, the option you want is much more appropriate for these adaptions than for any that don't significantly change the story or characters for most readers of the adaption. Editions of Roald Dahl's works would almost certainly remain combined even if we had a bowdlerization / expurgation / censored version option in work-to-work relationships.

>19 themulhern: to go back to what this would be called: making up a definition to recommend a feature for LT helpers makes no sense. Someone with little involvement in this recommendation should be able to figure out on their own—at least by looking up standard meanings—when to use it.

>26 themulhern: all dictionaries regularly change definitions according to popular usage. Whatever word that's chosen should match how it is currently used for literature.

The reason that translations are considered the same work is so that features like similar libraries will work. If I have Shogun in English it is linked to Shogun in other libraries even if its in another language.

>35 SandraArdnas:

I am not contradicting myself at all.

Yes, you are, and it's ridiculous that you'd deny it when it's up there plain for all to see. If the meaning and usage of the word when set down originally is sacrosanct, then you cannot defend the connotations accrued to it over centuries as equally sacrosanct. In short, whether interpreting the meaning while reading, translating or modernising, the proper thing is to pay attention to historical and other context.

You're so inundated with ideology, you can't see beyond it.

Ha. This from a person who stated she'd defend Rowling regardless of the argument, just because the rich white lady with more decibels than brains at her disposal is being widely criticised.

You're being totally dishonest. I'll leave you to it too.

>38 jjwilson61: I can see why that connection would be desirable. But I don't see why considering those the same work would be necessary to make the feature work properly.

>37 aspirit: Yeah. But I'm not saying you have to use the name. Consider it a temporary name, so you can work on the idea but call it something. Like internal software projects, that get renamed when they become fully mature.

The Oxford English Dictionary is one based on historical principles. So, each entry traces the use through a succession of documents, recording prior usages all the way back to the earliest known usages of the word, as well as the etymologies. You can read about this dictionary, and prior ones like Dr. Johnson's in The Professor and the Madman and also The Meaning of Everything. I have.

>40 themulhern: Because the relationships are ignored for libraries comparisons. The initial design of the site had books and works - and that was it. Individual records which everyone puts their own details in and a single record for all of those versions regardless of language, publisher and format.

We got relationships much much later. And they don’t do much for the library - even if the book you have contains 3 novels, nowhere on the site you will see an indication that you actually have these 3 novels for example (except the work pages themselves and even there it is not tied to you).

You want the site to be organized along different lines. That’s fine. But as the data is done now, translations must be inside of the works - or almost nothing will work. Can that be redesigned? Sure but… is it worth it? Sometimes design decisions require things to work in certain ways. If/when we get an editions layer, that may help separate the different actual editions inside of a work - but even then, I doubt that the concept of a work will disappear.

>42 AnnieMod: I see the problem, it's the ubiquitous problem of all software engineering (a design that no longer proves adequate to some new requirement).

Le Guin's son is also revising new editions of her Catwings books.

In a twist, Judy Blume has edited some of her own books so they're not period pieces, like Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret.

Nearly all Victorian novels have modernized spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Jane Austen too. There are tons of abridgements out there (not just Reader's Digest!).

It seems easiest to consider these as different editions of the same works, without bringing loaded terms like censorship or bowlderization into it.

>44 the_red_shoes: Depending on the changes made, some are most definitely not a different edition of the same work. Abridgments are already a different work on LT and rightly so. So are significantly edited versions, so there's author's preferred version of Gaiman's American God's and the original publication as two distinct works for instance.

Personally, I think any changes to the text should be easily identifiable when looking at the book, meaning they are noted somewhere on the cover or title page, even just modernized spelling and especially serious editing. Where any platform draws the line between different works will depend on a number of things, but identifying what belongs where according to criteria set shouldn't be an insurmountable riddle. Similarly, readers buying or borrowing a book should be able to easily identify the one they want.

I know that some modern printings of older books will say something like 'First published in 1803. This edition follows the 1825 edition,' followed by some comment about whether or not spelling has been standardized. How refreshing!

.

The nature of this debate seems itself to be good evidence of the need for a tag of this sort, whatever it is eventually called.

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species came out in at least five editions while he was alive, and fans of the work definitely have preferred editions. Because the work is so famous though, the edition or editions are generally clearly stated, so it is not a research project to find out what you've got.

Lois Duncan also updated her books (https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/44553-lois-duncan-thrillers-get-an-update.html).

I never worried to check whether it was obvious on the books. It would definitely be obvious from reading them.

Modernizing spelling is a bad idea. In the original Dorothy Sayers novels, or at least Whose Body, "phone" is spelled with an apostrophe, i.e., "'phone". That's because Lord Peter was being all aristocratically slangy in his speech and dropping the "tele-" prefix. Omit the apostrophe, and you cease to convey his style of speech as well.

>47 thmazing: Yes. There really is a need for this. But, it may not be possible on LT (due to prior software design decisions), and I doubt that any of the other library websites do any better on this problem.

>48 themulhern:, this discussion is mainly about fiction works. Once a fiction story has been published, it can be a bit deceitful to make undisclosed edits, particularly without the author’s consent. Even when the author is involved because they want to make it better or more appropriate for a modern audience, it should be noted as a revised edition.

James

New editions of nonfiction works are usually advertised as such to try and get more sales.

>52 Keeline: I started the discussion ;-> I consider non-fiction books an important part of the discussion also.

I think that the fiction books that are generally being edited in this surreptitious way are ones that (1) are still read for enjoyment today, and (2) are at the same time period pieces. So, Roald Dahl's children's books are called things like "beloved children's classics", and there is some similar appeal to Ian Fleming's Bond books.

I agree with you entirely that it should be made clear if a book has been revised. I would really prefer if it the identities of the revisers were made very clear. So, when Lois Duncan revises her own book, that's a distinct thing from her estate, if any, doing the revision or an intern employed by her publisher doing the revision. And readers should be able to know this easily.

>53 MarthaJeanne: It's not clear if the editing of fiction books in this surreptitious way isn't a marketing campaign of sorts. Dahl's publishers responded to the outcry by promising to put out "classic" versions of his books. This may very well have driven sales also. It's not entirely foolish to suspect deliberate manipulation of the book market by this means.

Another, non-fiction book that is honest about having been revised, is Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs by Elizabeth Peters. I'm sure that was a marketing effort, to some extent, as Peters was by then a best-selling author of historical and comic mystery novels about a fictional archaeologist excavating primarily in Egypt. Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs has a charming prologue about how all her friends told her that it would be no work at all, but that turned out not to be true because so much that was new had been discovered about ancient Egypt in the decades since the first book came out. Honest and charming, that's the best kind of revision.

Now it's P. G. Wodehouse.

I can see that people might take offence at the overt sexism, racism, classism ... in his books, but that is part of their point. Wooster is much inferior to all the people he looks down on.

>58 MarthaJeanne: By coincidence I listened to one of the later ones just recently and reviewed it: https://www.librarything.com/work/10099/reviews/235147178. I liked it. But I'm honestly not sure what the series is even supposed to be about. It's a hugely artificial world, even more so than, e.g., Christie's Poirot books, with characters who seem to me to be extremely abstract.

Maybe something involving fig-leaf would be a better term? https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O85428/fig-leaf-for-idavidi-fig-leaf-d-brucci...

"Is an adaptation of" seems to be the best fit of existing choices when the author is not making the edits personally, and is what I would select if ever in the situation of having to choose. The stripping of historical context from historical literary works by removing the language of the period to appeal to a new audience, albeit a brittle, fragile and emotionally incontinent one, is to me a textbook adaptation. The irony of it all is that it's completely performative. There is a reason the average Tik Tok video is less than 1 min long and that's pushing their attention span limit as it is. No, the latest spate of rewriting historical fiction isn't about fulfilling a market demand or artistic integrity , it's their version of protection money to the online mobs.

Since the origin of bowdlerize was the creation of Shakespeare adaptations deemed "family" appropriate, I don't see why adaptation can't be used for all the current re-writes coming down the pike. Unfortunately, I see a literal avalanche of sanitizations yet to come. This madness isn't going to end anytime soon, if ever.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bowdlers-wanted-clean-shakespeare-not-...

I've realized I probably have nothing against the Bowdlers, who who seem to have been quite up front about what they were doing. There is a notion of "nursery history", which is the actual facts of history (what happened) adapted and presented in a fashion suitable for children Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History. There is absolutely nursery mythology, as the parade of mutilations, incest, rape and cannibalism that is an essential part of, e.g, Greek mythology, isn't suitable for children in its unexpurgated actuality Classical Mythology. It's quite reasonable that there should also be nursery literature, and I guess that is really what the Bowdlers were going for, quite consciously.

Another interesting thing is that most of the books being "adapted" in this way have been given a higher profile than they otherwise would have had through movie and television series. Especially with Bond, and to a fair degree with Christie, these movie and television series have deviated from the spirit of the source material a good deal. Rather than hiring a writer to do novelizations of the movies, as was common in my youth, publishers want to get more revenue from these old books by rendering them less jarring to historically illiterate movie and television fans. This may be due to the lack of talented contemporary authors, such that even the semi-respectable work of infusing the characters in a movie with novelistic qualities is beyond any now available authors.

I've started two lists: https://www.librarything.com/list/44691/all/Cancelled-Books and https://www.librarything.com/list/44692/all/Stealth-and-Posthumously-Edited-Book... . Please feel free to add more, especially if you've got a useful online record of the book.

>63 themulhern: Nice!

BTW: Just noticed that you've got an extra "the" in the description of the second one (adapted not the by the author).

>64 bnielsen: Fixed!

I decided that their should be a separate category, "Purged Books", so I added that: https://www.librarything.com/list/44693/Purged-Books