Nothing ages books more than references to pay phones, fedoras, Edsels, coal burning heat.
I bought first editions of the first six Hardy Boys from the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. I was amazed at how different they were from the versions I bought in the 1970’s as a kid. The changes went beyond updating phrases like Model T. Entire pieces of the plot were updated. One book had a character practicing taxidermy as a hobby. I guess having teens gut and skin animals was a bit too intense for kids in the 70’s. The Hardy boys even carried pistols in one book. The characters were much more adult like in the early editions. Parenting attitudes changed and the Hardy Boys became more like modern teens.
I’m pretty sure Nancy Drew got similar revisions. Especially the attitudes towards women probably got updated. I’m not sure because I never bought early editions of them. Both these series were consider pulp fiction and aren’t literary classics. I understand classic authors like Twain and Hemingway wouldn’t be updated.
But how about the popular books that are read for fun? Harlequin Romances, detective stories, war novels.
Anyone aware of minor updates in newer editions of books?
My mom had several books from the Bobbsey Twins series. The series clearer got updated at some point, as one book (from a later printing) referenced events from a previous one that just hadn’t happened in the version that I had read.
As near as I could tell, as part of the update the plot of the books were changed to add a mystery element, probably due to the popularity of series like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.
Also, the Bobbsey family had a pair of black servants, who I definitely remember being presented very differently in the more “modern” version.
There’s a hardbound version of Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” available from Barnes & Nobles in which the dates of the stories on the Contents page have been updated. “January 1999: Rocket Summer,” is changed to “January 2030: Rocket Summer.” Right on through to, “October 2057: The Million Year Picnic,” instead of “October 2026: the Million Year Picnic.”
As I recall, there was a minor controversy in the science fiction genre a few years back. A company was re-issuing some classic works from a few decades back and the editor decided to remove any references to characters smoking.
I had a very old version of the Hardy Boys’ Hidden Harbor Mystery, in which Grover, an elderly negro (sic), had been born a slave. Because slavery days were integral to the plot, a later version had a man whose grandfather was born a slave recalling things his grandfather told him.
Also, I don’t remember if it was that book or not, but some Hardy book from about the same era had them finding Civil War era newspapers in a lighthouse and burning them for a signal, which was successful when a mail plane spotted them. I think it was that same book.
The most important timeless elements of any Hardy Boys book, of course, are a description of Aunt Ida as “angular,” and de rigeur is someone suffering a “blow to the solar plexus.”
This was the James Schmitz Telzey books - see here for a brief discussion SFF Net
A weird case of updating occurred in the latest editions of Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” - the original opening involved the aliens arriving when humans were about to launch a moon rocket, while in the revision, the aliens arrived while humans on a moon base were about to launch a Mars mission. In spite of that revision, the rest of the book was unchanged - including the parts that make it clear that the aliens arrive while people who were adults when WWII was going on are still hale and active.
I have a 1954 edition of How to Lie with Statistics and a reprint ca. 1980. Although the examples of salary ranges and commodity prices were untouched, every instance of “negro” was replaced with “black,” which was pretty obvious since it was done by pasting over the copy, then re-photographing it for the press. The font wasn’t an exact match.
The same book removed a cartoon that showed a before and after illustrating how Brand X shampoo works. In the original, the before was a frumpy housewife caricature in curlers and housecoat, the after was a Marilyn Monroe pose in a modest swimsuit. I can only assume the censors thought it too racy to live.
And another cartoon, which showed some “South Seas Islanders” sitting around a grass hut, wearing minimal clothing and bones in their noses was replaced with boneless dudes wearing overalls and looking more like a Captain Cook shipwreck survivor than an island native.
In the Repairman Jack series written by F. Paul Wilson, the first book, The Tomb, was “updated” to bring it into the timeline of the other books. I can’t remember if cultural references were changed, but I believe so.
Then there was a little book called, The Hobbit, in which some changes were made in the second edition to facilitate the sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Of course, those changes were plot-related, and not to update references.
Black Beauty is more readily available in an abridged form. It was difficult to figure out (on amazon) which version was the original - my mom had to get a librarian’s advice. In that case it appeared to be related to perceived difficulty getting younger readers to connect with the mannor in which the original was written.
Chapters in Mary Poppins books have been re-written to be 21st-century friendly. The most obvious one is a story where Mary takes the kids on a trip around the world with a magic compass. Nowadays they visit a dolphin and stuff, but originally they went to China to see a mandarin, America to visit an Indian chief, the North Pole to see Eskimos, and the South Seas to visit a black family apparently transplanted from Stereotype-Land, watermelon and all–which probably didn’t even make sense in 1930. All of the people are good friends with Mary–possibly related and very polite, but it’s all very embarrassing, and then Michael steals the compass and all the people start threatening him…
Nancy Drew stories have been extensively re-written, not just updated. If you find a very old copy of, say, The Message in the Hollow Oak and a new copy, they will be completely different stories. Often only the title is the same, and sometimes the stories are similar enough so that the cover illustrations could be re-used.
The series like The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, The Bobbsey Twins, etc. are a special case because they belonged to the Stratemeyer Syndicate:
The Stratemeyer Syndicate owned all the rights to the books and could do as they wished with them. They decided that they would update (and often completely rewrite) the books every couple of decades to modernize them. (Of course, many of the series weren’t very good and were allowed to drop out of print.)
Stephan King’s The Stand had its time period updated to the 1990’s when the uncut edition was released.
Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed was completely rewritten. I read a synopsis of the original once and decided to read it. The book I bought was… not the same. My first clue was when a book supposedly written in 1973 had a computer getting hot & bothered by images of Winona Ryder on the internet.
On the subject of Stephen King, he also released a rewritten version of The Gunslinger to fix some early installment weirdness from before he’d figured out the nature of the setting, and bring place names and character names into line with the later novels.
It does make sense to update kids books. Its hard getting kids to read unless its something they can relate to. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew need to stay current and up to date so todays kids can enjoy them like I did 35 years ago.
The Hardy boys even carried pistols in one book. The characters were much more adult like in the early editions. Parenting attitudes changed and the Hardy Boys became more like modern teens.
I understand classic authors like Twain and Hemingway wouldn’t be updated.