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The little house series was written for children, I believe I read in a article that was why she didn’t write her whole life and problems and hardships because it was for children to read.
For all you know it may inspire them to want to learn more. My daughter took a miner in history in college for fun, the little house series was on of her favorites as a child.
People have read about Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter, and criticized her. Like many others, I'm not a fan of RWL, but I also have to recognize the era she grew up in, when newspaper journalists didn't always feel the facts were pertinent to a story. I also believe RWL was bi-polar and that brings more understanding to her behavior and temperament.
The Little House TV series, which is still shown in reruns, has some anachronisms.
It's set in the 1880s, when telephones were barely invented. Only a handful of phones existed, in very large east-coast cities. Certainly, rural doctors in Minnesota did not have had telephones until several decades later. It's also unlikely that Nellie Oleson would have a voice-recording machine, which had also been barely invented, and use it to capture Laura's embarrasing gossip.
It's unrealistic (in one of the last episodes) that Laura would have traveled to Arizona to take a college class, or that the great Ralph Waldo Emerson would have lectured there. Arizona then was a wild frontier territory, and a train ride from Minnesota would have been extraordinarily long, complex and probably involve several changes of trains.
One episode was called "Jonathan's Mountain" with Ernest Borgnine. There are no mountains in southern Minnesota.
Of, for that matter, anywhere else in Minnesota.
There are some hills optimistically called 'mountains' in the northeastern part of the state, but it's really - really - stretching the term to call them that.
In a related incident, there was some months back a comic book character (i think a villian but again it was a while back so I'm not sure) who used a word some on the interwebs took offense to (think it was retard but again don't recall all the specifics).
It was decided to edit & revise the language used in said issue.
Now I'm not for those that delight in yelling fire in a crowded movie theater then scream free speech.
At the same time I think its lead to a slippery slope when instead of just issuing an apology, or a defense or a clarification that they start the revisionisms.
In a related incident, there was some months back a comic book character (i think a villian but again it was a while back so I'm not sure) who used a word some on the interwebs took offense to (think it was retard but again don't recall all the specifics).
It was decided to edit & revise the language used in said issue.
Now I'm not for those that delight in yelling fire in a crowded movie theater then scream free speech.
At the same time I think its lead to a slippery slope when instead of just issuing an apology, or a defense or a clarification that they start the revisionisms.
Agatha Christie wrote a book called And Then There Were None. At least, that was the title as published in the U.S. in 1940; it was published in 1939 in the UK under Christie's original title, Ten Little [a seven letter word beginning with 'N']. Apparently, the racial epithet in question was considered far more offensive in the states than across the pond some eight decades ago. Seems like a reasonable and prudent business decision to me. After all, the publisher could have retained the original title but didn't want to see diminished stateside sales as a result. It would seem the Christie agreed with the decision. If it mattered to her all that much, she could have refused the change.
By the way, comics in the 21st century are far, far less subject to such acts of 'taming down' today than in the past. In the 1950s, the Comics Code Authority - like the Hays Code with regard to motion pictures - mandated a whole slew of requirements by which comics had to abide. Here's just a sampling:
Quote:
*Policemen, judges, Government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
*The crime of kidnapping shall never be portrayed in any detail, nor shall any profit accrue to the abductor or kidnaper. The criminal or the kidnaper must be punished in every case.
*No comic magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title.
*All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society.
*The treatment of live-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.
Note that these were not mere options for writers to follow in order to maximize sales. If they did not abide by these rules, it was essentially impossible to get a comic published and distributed.
I have no particular issue with the Little House books, though I hardly remember them decades after I read one or two.
Agatha Christie wrote a book called And Then There Were None. At least, that was the title as published in the U.S. in 1940; it was published in 1939 in the UK under Christie's original title, Ten Little [a seven letter word beginning with 'N']. Apparently, the racial epithet in question was considered far more offensive in the states than across the pond some eight decades ago. Seems like a reasonable and prudent business decision to me. After all, the publisher could have retained the original title but didn't want to see diminished stateside sales as a result. It would seem the Christie agreed with the decision. If it mattered to her all that much, she could have refused the change.
Quite frankly your illustrating my point.
In all the times I have heard about Christie, the fact you mentioned was never brought up at all.
In all the times I have heard about Christie, the fact you mentioned was never brought up at all.
You made a point about a slippery slope. The slippery slope fallacy holds that if we do X, then we necessarily are going to have to increasingly do X. Yet the example I posted is 80 years old. Where's the increase? In fact, writing has gotten much more open since that time. The First Amendment has been incorporated, and the then-widespread obscenity laws that existed in various cities and states were gutted by Supreme Court rulings beginning in the late 1950s. Books such as Lady Chatterly's Lover and Tropic of Cancer are no longer banned in the United States, though they previously were.
The Christie book as original published - ie, under its original title - is widely available on both Amazon and E-bay (I just checked) and undoubtedly elsewhere as well. The fact that you were unaware of this is no more remarkable than the fact that when I peruse Christie's list of published works (and I've read at least two of her books that I can recall) I see all sorts of titles still in print as such of which so far as I can tell I have never heard.
As I noted with comics in general, the form is much more open now as far as what content is allowed. This is also true with books. I have just finished a manuscript of roughly 90,000 words and will be pursuing publication shortly. Sixty years ago, no publisher would have touched it and had I self-published it then the work would be subject to legal bans. Why? Because of content. Today, I face no such restrictions. Long gone are the days when married couples on television had to sleep in separate beds and the word 'expecting' had to be used because 'pregnancy' was beyond the pale, when Mick Jagger had to agree to change 'Let's spend the night together' to 'Let's spend some time together' to appear on the Ed Sullivan show, when films had to refrain from depicting interracial relationships or gays in any contexts other than degeneracy or effeminate camp.
That artists will occasionally decide to change what they have written bothers me not one iota. Singers alter lyrics. Directors change cuts. That is artistic freedom. I, too, have done this during the editing process, and have been open to it at other times where I eventually deemed it unnecessary.
There is no slippery slope. To the contrary, while social standards are constantly changing, we're going steadily in the opposite direction.
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