I understand that the American publishers of Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass – the final volume of the His Dark Materials trilogy, which began with The Golden Compass/*Northern Lights[/] – censored some portions of the book before releasing it in the United States. Does anyone know whether the Kindle version sold on Amazon (U.S.) is the expurgated or unexpurgated version?
The Kindle version is probably the edited US version. But really, the changes don’t appear to be that drastic.
What did the print versions censor?
See the Wikipedia link above; basically some (minor, in my opinion) passages relating to the sexual maturing of the main character.
I noticed your emphasis on the word “edited.” Do you not accept the use of the word “censored” here? It seems to me a perfect example of private censorship (censorship in this send is a subset of editing) and reflects the same usage as “network censors” as used in reference to television (which officially might have a name such as “standards and practices department”).
And even if the changes are minor, I object to bowdlerization, and find it especially insulting when as a member of the American audience.
Yes I do. I’m a librarian and when we talk about book censorship, we mean something very specific (a town or school attempting to remove a book from circulation completely). Decisions a publisher makes before a book is even released are not our concern (except for obtaining a UK version as well as a US version to have a fuller collection).
Well, that’s all fine and well for librarians’ professional jargon, but I object to private censorship in the form of bowdlerization of an already published novel by a publisher just as much as I object to government censorship, so I reject the correction.