Other Heinlein works were updated - most dramatically “If This Goes On” which has a rather different ending in the original version: the revolution was concluded with mass hypnosis - a method that in the revised version the revolutionaries emphatically decide against.
Charles Sheffield kept reworking his books - “The Nimrod Hunt” was reworked into “The Mind Pool,” “Tomorrow and Tomorrow” was a revised and expanded version of “At the Eschaton” and the Heritage Universe novels had substantial revisions in the later edition.
David Gerrold updated “When HARLIE was One” as “When Harlie was One, 2.0” to account for changes in computer technology - he also substantially altered “A Matter for Men” (added a chapter or so) in later editions.
If I recall (and I’m not 100% sure) Stephen King’s The Stand had a second publication that was significantly expanded and more detailed because by that point he had more clout and doorstopper books were more acceptable to the buying public.
The publisher of John Barth’s The Floating Opera insisted on his changing the ending. Barth complied and it was published in 1956. In 1967, Barth revised it, putting back his original ending and making various changes throughout.
Piers Anthony wrote and sold a novel, But What of Earth?, in 1976. The editor had the book extensively revised by Robert Coulson, to the point where Anthony and Coulson were listed as co-authors. Anthony won back the publication rights in a lawsuit and published his original version in 1989.
He also put out a revised edition of The Gunslinger in 2004, which added a few things and fixed some continuity errors but didn’t significantly lengthen the book.
Neil Gaiman has published “author’s preferred text” editions of Neverwhere and American Gods. In the introduction to American Gods, he states the new one is 12,000 words longer.
Mary Shelley revised Frankenstein 13 years after the original publication. For starters, her name was on the 1831 edition. The original 1818 version was published anonymously. Biggest change seemed to me to be in the original version Victor Frankenstein causes his own downfall through bad decisions and hubris, whereas in 1831, he’s a victim of fate and destiny. And fiancee Elizabeth’s backstory changes so she and Victor are no longer cousins.
Terry Pratchett re-released his very first novel The Carpet People, which he had originally written when he was a teenager, in a revised edition more in keeping with his modern sensibilities and skill level.
Raymond Feist’s Magician got an extended ‘Author’s Preferred Version’ ten years after first being published.
The Princess Bride now includes text at the end that was originally only available if you wrote in to request it, and then later available on a website, but it probably doesn’t count. Always take the opportunity to mention tPB though.
Yet another Heinlein revision: Podkayne of Mars was published with one ending, despite protests by Heinlein. It’s been republished later with both endings.
Richard Wright’s Native Son had to be cleaned up for the book club edition, throwing out such lovely scenes as Bigger Thomas and his friends masturbating in the movie theatre.
The Virginia Editions of Heinlein’s works are supposed to be definitive. Fine, I’ve got them and I’m on board.
But some of them use original text prior to some editing, either for their pulp releases or before publication as books. It’s trainwrecked me a few times as I’ll be rereading something and go BAM into text I don’t recognize.
Usually, it’s small things. But in Red Planet there’s about a page or so of extra discussion about gun rights and responsibilities in an early scene.
The edition we used in high school had the “fixed” version and then the original ending. So versions of this ilk would fit, I think.
It’s not all that different from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil having the “happy” ending in the original theatrical release and then the one with his ending coming out later.
Madeleine L’Engle’s publishers ordered her to “sanitize” **And Both Were Young **, one of her early novels. I put sanitize in quotes because what she put back in was still pretty tame for the early 1980s, when it was restored. Still, she was told that the main character and her guy friend couldn’t kiss, her widowed father couldn’t court one of her teachers, and the day of her mother’s death had to be New Year’s Day two years prior, instead of “It will be a year tomorrow.” Although when the updated version was published, it also lacked mentions of clothing coupons and other post-WWII-Europe references. I would rather they had been left in with footnotes.
And speaking of that kind of re-editing, some of Judy Blume’s books have been re-released with records changed to CDs and the like. Which confirms what I’ve thought for a long time: Blume was not writing fiction so much as she was writing educational stories that happened to be entertaining.
The publication of these changes was largely due to a misunderstanding between Tolkien and his publisher. In 1947 while he was working on LOTR, he sent a batch of corrections to the first edition of The Hobbit (typographical errors and such), intended for incorporation into the second edition. He also sent what he called a “specimen of rewriting (for your amusement)” of a large part of the Riddles in the Dark chapter, intended to remove the motif in the original story that Gollum actually intended to freely give Bilbo his Ring, which he was finding difficult to reconcile with the nature of the Ring as it was developing in LOTR. He did not intend Allen & Unwin to publish the “rewriting” but merely wanted their opinion on it, and if they liked the changes he might work further on it. Without understanding that the small corrections and the “specimen rewriting” were entirely different things, and without communicating with him, they went ahead and published all his changes in the second edition. Although initially surprised, Tolkien decided to accept the changes and took the second edition text as canon for the background of LOTR.
I wanted to add that Tolkien’s creation of the idea that the First Edition story was a lie told by Bilbo was absolutely brilliant, and a good example of how he could take two seemingly contradictory statements and add a new statement that doesn’t contradict, but resolves the two stories. Another example is his creation of Thrain the Old to resolve the inconsistency between the Hobbit narrative and the Hobbit map’s inscription “Here of old was Thrain King under the Mountain”.
The First Edition story presented the Ring as too benign and was missing any trace of the malignant influence it has on its possessors. So he adds the unreliable narrator motif, and now the same First Edition story is strong evidence of the Ring’s malignant influence on the usually honest Bilbo.