Puffin Books’ secret rewriting of some of Roald Dahl’s books is made worse for many Brits — or, at least those not in their earliest years — by the extraordinary role that Puffin used to fill in British children’s literature.
Puffin was founded in 1940, as a subsidiary of Penguin Books (which it still is), but it enjoyed an extraordinary flowering after Kaye Webb became editor in 1961, just a few years before I hit the bookshelves in earnest. It was Webb’s Puffin that introduced me and many of my contemporaries to Alan Garner, Geoffrey Trease, Rosemary Sutcliff, the Narnia books, Stig of the Dump, and much, much more. I was even a member of the Puffin Club. I still have a couple of books from that time complete with their Puffin Club bookplates.
Oh yes, Webb not only published Roald Dahl’s books, but she also became a friend of his. She would, I am sure, have been appalled — not only by the news of what Puffin has done, but also for what it revealed about what Puffin has become, and, for that matter, about what this furtive rewriting says about the culture in which Puffin now does business.
Note too this (from the Daily Telegraph):
Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company made the latest changes in conjunction with Inclusive Minds, which its spokesperson describes as “a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature”. Organisations such as Inclusive Minds have sprung up to help publishers navigate these newly choppy waters.
A collective. Of course.
A collective of rent-seekers. Of course.
The Daily Telegraph:
Matthew Dennison, who wrote a biography of the author, Teller of the Unexpected, published last year, says Dahl was particular about the language he used. “Dahl typically worked seven days a week for a year on one of his full-length novels and was drained by the experience, which involved extensive rewriting as he worked, followed by a lively back-and-forth with his editor,” he says.
“The process of editing often focused on individual words or particular expressions, as Dahl kept faith with some of the interwar slang of his childhood, and aspects of his vocabulary up to his death continued to recall the enthusiasms of English prep schoolboys. This was both natural to him and deliberate, and he resisted interference.
“His relationships with his editors included marked fractiousness on Dahl’s part,” he adds. “Overruling proposed word changes made by the American editor of The Witches, Stephen Roxburgh, Dahl wrote, ‘I don’t approve of some of your Americanisms. This is an English book with an English flavour and so it should remain.’”
When it came to children’s books, Dennison says Dahl didn’t care what adults thought as long as his target readers were happy. “‘I don’t give a b—-r what grown-ups think,’ was a characteristic statement,” Dennison says. “And I’m almost certain that he would have recognised that alterations to his novels prompted by the political climate were driven by adults rather than children, and this always inspired derision, if not contempt, in Dahl.
“He never, for example, had any truck with librarians who criticised his books as too frightening, lacking moral role models, negative in their portrayal of women, etc,” he continues. “Dahl wrote stories intended to kindle in children a lifelong love of reading and to remind them of the childhood wonderlands of magic and enchantment, aims in which he succeeded triumphantly. Adult anxieties about political niceties didn’t register in this outlook. This said, although Dahl could be unabashed in offending adults, he took pains never to alienate or make unhappy his child readers.”
Writers may wish to rethink their ambitions. If their work should prove lasting, it may end up being tortured for all eternity This is not mere “sensitivity” editing, by the way. This is blunt, agenda-driven rewriting. It is idea injection. And it will be continual once it starts.
I ran into two used book stores today and grabbed classics like I was saving them from a fire.