Considered to be among the finest authors who ever lived, Agatha Christie is now being subject to revisionism. According to a report by The Telegraph, in a bid to remove racist references and potentially offensive language to suit modern sensibilities, her novels have been modified.
Among these are parts from Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries, written between 1920 and 1976, which have had passages reworked or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins to strip them of descriptions and references to ethnicity which might be considered demeaning, according to The Telegraph.
In Christie’s debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot describes a character as 'a Jew, of course'. This bit has been completely removed from the new version.
Similarly, the word 'native' has been replaced with 'local' in Christie’s short story collection Miss Marple’s Final Cases and Two Other Stories. In addition, a passage where a servant is referred to as 'black' and 'grinning' has been removed. The new version sees the removal of a reference to race and changed the action to simply 'nodding'.
The 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, in which the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that “They come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”.
This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”
Agatha Christie Limited, a company run by the author’s great-grandson James Prichard, is understood to handle licensing for her literary and film rights. The publisher and Agatha Christie Ltd., however, have not commented on the issue yet.
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