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09/17/2003: US vs. British editions of Possession
I found this entry in languagehat (based on this paper that compares the editions in detail), about how Random House wanted to (and in some ways did) change A.S. Byatt's Possession, and I'm appalled. It seems it could have been much, much worse if Byatt hadn't objected to a lot of the suggestions for "improvement" but I still find it bizarre that they felt the need to change some paragraphs, word order and punctuation like that. I would have never thought they'd do things like this to a book when they publish an American edition of a British book, but obviously I'm wrong. I know for sure that I'll now never again buy an US edition of an English book just because it's sometimes cheaper here than the UK version. I mean, you can obviously get something quite different from the original book (and not just an edition with some vocabulary and spelling changes for the "benefit" of US readers). Maybe I shouldn't be so shocked, but somehow I am.
