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Roald Dahl in 1961
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There had been sharp criticism of the language adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's books: now the British Puffin publishing house has announced an unchanged edition of its classics.
This will be published in addition to the defused version for young readers, it said in a statement on Friday.
"We recognize the importance of continuing to print the author's original writing," the statement said.
Readers would have the freedom to choose which version of the Dahl stories they preferred.
The publisher's decision to remove offensive content and words for a new edition of the books had previously caused an outcry.
Words like "fat" and "ugly" were also reported to disappear from Dahl's works.
The publisher confirmed that issues such as weight, mental health, violence, gender and skin color were affected by the changes.
For many critics, however, this went too far.
The British-Indian author Salman Rushdie accused the publisher of "absurd censorship".
The publisher justified the changes by saying that the new edition is aimed at young readers who are coming into contact with literature for the first time.
According to the publisher, the classic series of Dahl books will include seventeen titles, including famous works such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Matilda", "The BFG", "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and others.
The books are therefore enriched with archive material.
Briton Roald Dahl, who died in 1990, is controversial because he repeatedly drew attention to himself with clearly anti-Semitic statements.
His family apologized in 2020 for the writer's views.
But that is not the background for the adaptation of his texts.
xvc/dpa
