An upcoming reissue of Sir Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels will be edited to remove and alter offensive passages and phrases. This comes on the heels of Roald Dahl’s children’s books offering a version with offensive terms removed.
The new collection will be released in celebration of the 70th anniversary of “Casino Royale,” the first book in the series. Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, the rights holders for the novels, decided to commission a review by sensitivity readers. Just like the right’s holder’s for Dahl’s work did.
Each book in the series will also carry a disclaimer:
“This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”
These novels were written between 1951 and 1966. Most of the edits are due to Fleming using a pejorative term for Black people. These references have been removed almost entirely and replaced with “Black person” or “Black man.”
Fleming Approved Edits in 1964
In many of the books, including 1959’s “Goldfinger,” 1960’s “Quantum of Solace,” and 1961’s “Thunderball,” ethnicities have been removed. And to be clear, not all of these changes were done posthumously. Fleming himself approved edits to the U.S. edition of “Live and Let Die,” before he passed in 1964.
“We at Ian Fleming Publications reviewed the text of the original Bond books and decided our best course of action was to follow Ian’s lead,” the publishers said. “We have made changes to ‘Live and Let Die’ that he himself authorized. Following Ian’s approach, we looked at the instances of several racial terms across the books and removed a number of individual words or else swapped them for terms that are more accepted today but in keeping with the period in which the books were written.”
But of course, they encourage James Bond fans to judge for themselves. “We encourage people to read the books for themselves when the new paperbacks are published in April.”
