As I noted last week, Penguin Random House partially backed off on sanitizing Roald Dahl’s books, promising authentic editions in addition to the expurgated ones. But it isn’t just kids’ books that are getting this treatment. The Spectre of bowdlerization is now haunting Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Ian Fleming Publications has announced a new edition of the Bond novels that remove any suggestions that Bond was ever prejudiced against black people. If the Telegraph article is to be trusted, his prejudices against every other group, including East Asians, women, and gays, have been allowed to stand. In some cases, black people have just been erased. “Detail is also removed from Goldfinger, where the race of the drivers in the Second World War logistics unit, the Red Ball Express – which had many black servicemen – is not mentioned, instead referring only to ‘ex-drivers’.”

A disclaimer to be included in the books says, “A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.” That’s nonsense. Keeping as close as possible to the original text means using the original text.

People in past times wrote things that most people today find objectionable. It does no good to falsify their words. We need to understand how people thought in the past if we’re going to understand where we’ve come from and where we’re going. Altering past authors’ words is an insidious form of book banning; readers think they’re getting the text as it was originally published, but they aren’t. Rewriting historical books to make them conform to today’s attitudes is rewriting history.

As I’ve noted before, long copyright is largely to blame. Ian Fleming is no longer around to fight for the integrity of his books or to make changes of his own choice, but the business that owns his copyrights can make any changes it wants. Once the copyright expires, it’s a different story. Any publishing house can issue a “sensitive” edition of Mark Twain and some do, but none of them can stop their competitors from printing the real thing, or customers from preferring it.

Fortunately, widespread protests are greeting these bowdlerized editions. Perhaps eventually publishers will figure out that readers want what the authors wrote, not what the publishers think they should have written.