Roald Dahl and the Ethics of Art

The priggish redaction of literary works has a long history, dating back at least to Henrietta and Thomas Bowdler’s 1807 The Family Shakespeare, which excised around 10 percent of the original text to avoid “profaneness and obscenity” ranging from Ophelia’s suicide to Mercutio’s remark that “the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.” The hero of Byron’s Don Juan (1819) reads the Classics in bowdlerised editions, which separate all the rude parts of Catullus and Martial into an appendix—which, the poet points out, just makes them easier to find and “saves, in fact, the trouble of an index.” Dahl himself toned down some of his novels in response to criticism. The Oompa-Loompas of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) were originally pygmies from “the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle.” In response to protests, the author turned them into fantastical pale-skinned beings.