Despite hysteria over a U.K. report that the Roald Dahl Story Company would be modifying the works of the late author, it appears U.S. and other European publishers outside of the U.K. will not be releasing the “new” versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, and other works by the late Dahl. A review of Dahl’s catalog, spearheaded by the Dahl Company in cooperation with a company called Inclusive Minds, reportedly resulted in “hundreds of changes across the author’s 16-book body of work, generally relating to gender, race, personal appearance, mental health, and violence,” according to Publisher’s Weekly.
The Dahl Company maintains that the changes were “small and carefully considered,” but that has not stopped everyone from PEN America to Salman Rushdie to the British Prime Minister from vocally opposing the alterations. Some are pointing to Netflix’s 2020 acquisition of the Dahl Company, although the Dahl Company itself maintains that the review was already underway before Netflix came into the picture.
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“Roald Dahl books published by Penguin Young Readers and distributed in the U.S. are the editions that have existed for years and do not reflect the recent editorial changes made in U.K. editions,” a representative for the publisher told Publisher’s Weekly. “Penguin Young Readers regularly reviews its backlist and Dahl titles will be reviewed accordingly.”
Penguin acknowledged that changes are periodically made, particularly to children’s books, as the meaning and impact of words change over time.
The same report indicates that Dahl’s Dutch publisher De Fonte, and French publisher Gallimard, are declining to make changes at this time.
As ComicBook.com’s Nicole Drum pointed out, there is a long history of criticism of Dahl and his work, some of which has resulted in prior changes to the books themselves. The original 1964 text of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory presented Oompa Loompas as being from “the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle,” and by the publication of the book’s sequel in 1972, descriptions in both art and text of the sequel and reprints of the original book had changed to them having “golden-brown hair” and “rosy-white skin”. Dahl also came under scrutiny for anti-Semitic statements in a 1983 interview, which the Dahl family apologized for in 2020.
An analysis by Helen Lewis for The Atlantic suggested that despite good intentions, it’s basically impossible for Dahl’s work to be “made nice,” since both as a person and as a writer, his “spikiness” and inaccessibility is part of what defines him. This can be seen in more recent adaptations of Dahl’s work, which have leaned into the strange and upsetting nature of his text.
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