History Bowdlerise / Literature

* Strangely, ''Literature/TheMartian'' was bowdlerized by author Creator/AndyWeir himself, because of the book's popularity and all of its real world science, schools wanted a special edition that removed all of Mark Watney's [[SirSwearsALot swearing]].

''Literature/TheMartian'' received this treatment from its own author Creator/AndyWeir, who [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/business/andy-weirs-best-seller-the-martian-gets-a-classroom-friendly-makeover.html wrote a "Classroom Edition"]] after he was approached by science teachers who wondered why he had to use [[ClusterFBomb so many cuss words]] in a book that was otherwise perfect for getting kids excited about space.

* Creator/Leo Tolstoy complained that when ''What is Art?'' was submitted for publication, some of his sentiments were softened to conform to the Russian mores of the time, like replacing "Church religion" with "Roman Catholic religion" and "patriotism" with "pseudo-patriotism", as if to imply that he was a Russian patriot who accepted all the doctrines of the Orthodox Church when in reality, Tolstoy believed, among other things, that Jesus was merely a wise man and rejected the doctrine of the Redemption of mankind, considering it "to be one of the most untrue and harmful of Church dogmas".

* ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' has gotten this treatment as UsefulNotes/SchoolStudyMedia. Teachers will often only cover the pilgrims as characters and a few cherry-picked tales (the Pardoner's Tale, the Wife of Bath's Tale, etc.) in isolation from the other Tales. Not to mention the frequency with which they'll suppress any discussion of the other stories, most notably the Miller's Tale and the Reeve's Tale. As a result, the students (assuming that they have had no experience with ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' up until that point) only get to know about the characters and some of the stories, and don't get to read them in the context in which they're presented: as an argument where the pilgrims are telling their stories basically to prove their points and, sometimes, as [[TakeThat take thats]] at each other.

* Arabic translations of the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series omit any references to alcohol use, except by Death Eaters, and remove any mention of pork, since both are forbidden in Islam. They also [[NoHuggingNoKissing removed every mention of characters kissing]], even on the cheek, to appease religiously conservative readers.

* "Figment", the Little Golden Book based on ''Ride/JourneyIntoImagination'', has the scene in the Literature realm of imagination include things from stories of all kinds of genres instead of just having things from horror stories. The verse of the original ride's theme song "One Little Spark" about ingredients for a scary story is also left out as a result.

* "Figment", the Little Golden Book based on ''Ride/JourneyIntoImagination", has the scene in the Literature realm of imagination include things from stories of all kinds of genres instead of just having things from horror stories. The verse of the original ride's theme song "One Little Spark" about ingredients for a scary story is also left out as a result.

* OlderThanPrint: Gaius Vallerius Creator/{{Catullus}}' Carmen 16. Written about 50-100 years before the birth of Christ, it was considered so offensive that it wasn't openly published in English until the 20th century, and even then as a paraphrased version. It was written as a response to two poets who'd refered to his work as soft and as a statement that though a poet is to act decently, he is by no means bound to write politely. The opening line is, roughly translated, "I will sodomize you and skull fuck you".

* OlderThanPrint: Gaius Vallerius Creator/{{Catullus}}' Carmen 16. Written about 50-100 years before the birth of Christ, it was considered so offensive that it wasn't openly published in English until the 20th century, and even then as a paraphrased version. It was written as a response to two poets who'd reffered to his work as soft and as a statement that though a poet is to act decently, he is by no means bound to write politely. The opening line is, roughly translated, "I will sodomize you and skull fuck you".

* In Edgar Rice Burroughs' ''Literature/{{Barsoom}}'' series, all of the Martians (and John Carter himself) enjoy their various adventures naked in nothing but leather harnesses. However, in all of the film adaptations and many of the artworks depicting Barsoomians (Martians), they are depicted as wearing loincloths and at least one image (depicted as the main image on the Barsoom wiki page) has John Carter in a distinctly non-leather type of armor.
* ''Are U 4 Real'', the American translation of Sara Kadefors’ Swedish young-adult novel ''Literature/SandorSlashIda'', suffered from this trope. The story was relocated from the Swedish cities of Gothenburg and Stockholm to San Francisco and Los Angeles, the teenaged protagonists’ names were changed from Sandor and Ida into Alex and Kyla and several parts of the book dealing with Ida’s sexual experiences were censored or removed entirely. The author was not happy and stated that the censored parts are necessary to understand why Ida acts the way she does in the story. The American translator defended the changes, stating that the original contained ”too much sex” and that it would have been hard to sell in American stores.

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* Modern reprints of Creator/EnidBlyton's classic ''The Faraway Tree'' children's series rename the characters Dick and Fanny to Rick and Frannie because of the "sexual nature" of their names. The villainous school teacher Dame Slap, so named for the punishment she dishes out to students, is renamed "Dame Snap" and now punishes students by loudly reprimanding them instead of spanking them.

* In Marie de France's poem ''Lanval'', the original story has the faerie queen ride into town, and save Lanval from execution. He leaps upon the back of her horse as she rides away, providing a reversal of the traditional knight in shining armor archetype. In some translations/adaptations/what have you, [[UnfortunateImplications people have had Lanval take the front of the horse, returning the archetype to its "proper" form.]] This has the unfortunate side-effect of removing a huge chunk of what makes the faerie queen so mysterious and alluring (her beauty is ''so'' great that she holds sway over everyone around her, and one of Arthur's knights gladly takes the traditionally "feminine" place).
** Also in ''Lanval'', Guenevere at one point accuses Lanval of being a gay misogynist with a stable of catamites. One early-twentieth-century translation reduces this to: "'Launfal,' she cried, 'well I know that you think little of woman and her love. There are sins more black that a man may have upon his soul.'"

* The controversial ''Literature/ScaryStoriesToTellInTheDark'' books have recently been re-released with [[http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2011/12/18/scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark-gammell-vs-helquist/ tamed down illustrations]]...a fact over which many fans of the classic, terrifying illustrations are very unhappy. And to rub salt in the wound for those who were never able to obtain copies of the books with the original illustrations, said books have had printing discontinued by their publishers, and online prices are being inflated in correspondence with the tamed-down editions.

* Children's book {{parody}} ''Literature/GoTheFuckToSleep'' proved popular enough to get an alternate, actually child-friendly version called ''Seriously Go To Sleep''.

** In the King James Version, the first of which being in the sixteenth century, the translators deliberately replaced the tetragrammaton, four Hebrew letters frequently translated to either YHWH (Yahweh) or JHVH (Jehovah), with the all capital, LORD. In the foreword for some translations the reason is given that, after the second century, the spoken name of God was bad luck. Which gives us the reason why no one can agree on the true translation. That said, replacing God's name with a word meaning "Lord" is much older than KJV; the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate did the same thing ("Kyrios" and "Dominus", respectively), and so did (and still do) the Jews (replacing it with "Adonai"); God's name was considered so sacred that only the High Priest was allowed to say it. "Jehovah" is believed to have originated from combining the consonants of God's name with the vowels of "Adonai"; "Yahweh" is a modern reconstruction of the pronunciation.

* In the storybook adaptation of ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit?'' the wild turkey beer is changed to soda pop and all references to the words kill and die have been removed.
* The ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' series, set in the mid-late 21st century, lampshades the tendency for this to happen to fairy tales with their version of the Red Riding Hood tale. Instead of being killed by the woodcutter the wolf repents, and ''everyone'' lives happily ever after. The incredibly old Mr. Sellars mentions that in the version he was told as a child little Red Riding Hood didn't survive herself, much less the grandmother and the wolf.

** Considering the etymology of "nigger", the original version is actually kind of FridgeLogic-y...

* An edition of ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn'' has recently been bowdlerized, having all instances of the word "nigger" replaced with "slave" (even to the point of free black characters being referred to as 'slave'). It's actually surprising that it took ''this'' long for something like that to happen.
** Probably because the racism's a big chunk of Huck's CharacterDevelopment, a fact that powered most of the ire over the edition.
*** One edition has Huck talking to the Widow Douglas about a steamship explosion. Original: "Was anybody hurt?" "No, ma'am. Killed a nigger." "Well, that's good, because sometimes people get hurt." The second sentence of Huck's reply is cut out, missing Twain's whole point that even a good woman like the Widow treats blacks as less than people.

* ''Literature/NjalsSaga'': On account of a curse put on him by an angry ex-lover, Hrut cannot have sex with his wife Unn because every time he is in bed with her, his erection becomes too large for them to have intercourse. English translations from before the 1970s are often extremely vague about the precise nature of the curse. The 1861 translation by George W. Dasent lets Unn say (her father having "pressed her to speak out") that "she and Hrut could not live together, because he was spell-bound".

* The plot of ''Literature/NjalsSaga'' is kicked off when a man is cursed by his angry ex-girlfriend so that his penis becomes [[GagPenis so ludicrously huge]] that he will never again be able to have sex with a woman. English translations from before the 1970s are often extremely vague about the precise nature of the curse.