There have been some interesting followups to the controversy over the decision of the Roald Dahl’s estate and publishers to revise his books to remove some language and ideas that are now seen as offensive.

One item that emerged was that Dahl in his own lifetime was willing to change his books in response to opposition and to accommodate the changing cultural ethos so that his books would continue to sell and be adapted to other media.

Amid the outcry over Dahl’s books being edited, many seem to have forgotten that the author previously edited his work himself to make it less offensive. He edited his book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 1973, just shy of a decade after its initial publication. Meanwhile, the edits took place just two years after the film adaption, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was released. In his initial book, the Oompa Loompas were depicted as African Pygmy people who were snuck out of Africa in crates by Willy Wonka and basically forced into servitude in his factory.

Dahl’s depiction of the Oompa Loompas was likely influenced by the United Kingdom’s decolonization period. In the years following World War II, many former British colonies achieved independence. These newly independent countries became known as the New Commonwealth. The 1948 British Nationality Act gave the New Commonwealth citizenship rights, allowing them to work in the UK. White UK workers began to feel threatened that immigrants would take over their jobs. As a result, Dahl portrays the Oompa Loompas as coming from Africa and resulting in Wonka firing his entire workforce, much to the chagrin of Charlie’s family. That they become slaves in the factory represents the UK regaining its glory as the British Empire and reducing these immigrants back into positions of servants.

However, the book’s film adaption was made in the U.S., which was in its post-Civil Rights Movement era. As a result, news of the film sparked protests from groups like the NAACP about the Oompa Loompas’ depiction. Under pressure from the group, the film changed the Oompa Loompas’ origin story. Shortly after, Dahl’s publisher also heeded calls to change the Oompa Loompas and gave them orange skin and green hair and origins from Loompaland in editions of the book after 1973.

Now, the revisions Dahl made weren’t because he had changed his perspective. The film’s changes were made after it was threatened with a boycott by the NAACP. The book reportedly changed after American author Eleanor Cameron effectively engaged Dahl in debate over the depiction of the Oompa Loompas, and the revised editions of the book were released alongside Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Edits were clearly made to avoid facing potential profit losses from the film or the book’s sequel. This is why only minimal changes were made while plenty of other controversial material remained, including the Oompa Loompas’ connections to slavery and overt antisemitism in The Witches.

Meanwhile, a recording has emerged of Dahl strongly opposing any changes that might be made by others even after his death.

One of Roald Dahl’s best-known characters was the Enormous Crocodile, “a horrid greedy grumptious brute” who “wants to eat something juicy and delicious”.

Now a conversation the author had 40 years ago has come to light, revealing that he was so appalled by the idea that publishers might one day censor his work that he threatened to send the crocodile “to gobble them up”.

The conversation took place in 1982 at Dahl’s home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where he was talking to the artist Francis Bacon.

“I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!” he said.

With his typically evocative language, he added: “When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.”

Changes to books to remove offensive language is not uncommon. For example, Agatha Christie has a famous novel that currently has the title And then there were none that has had many cinematic and TV adaptations. It started out in 1939 with the title Ten Little N****** based on a nursery rhyme of that time. That title was changed in the US to Ten Little Indians and later finally settled on the current one.

Just recently, I borrowed from the library an old edition of the Christie book A Murder is Announced, first published in 1950. I did this because I read that the recent film Glass Onion that I reviewed favorably here had taken its inspiration from that book and I was curious about how closely it hewed to it. In reading it, I was startled to encounter a passage in which the detective and his superiors casually talk about Miss Marple and other older women as ‘pussies’, not just once but many times. In context, it is clear that the word referred to cats which was then slang for older women, and that its morphing into the currently used slang term for female genitalia had not as yet occurred. If the book were written now, Christie would likely not have written it and even if she had, her editor and publisher would not have allowed it to pass. I do not know if recent editions have changed the word.

It is clear that the desires of an author’s publisher and their heirs to continue to derive revenue from their works is always going to be the dominant factor in such decisions, in addition to concerns about violating current cultural norms. Whether the changes are defensible on general principles depends on whether the books are aimed at adults or children and if the latter, then there should be much greater leeway to do so so that children can enjoy the stories without subtly absorbing prejudicial ideas and language.