Recently, NewSouth Books announced the publication of a new version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Bowdlerized by Auburn University’s Dr. Alan Gribben, Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, is described by NewSouth thusly:
In a radical departure from standard editions, Twain’s most famous novels are published here as the continuous narrative that the author originally envisioned. More controversial will be the decision by the editor, noted Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben, to eliminate the pejorative racial labels that Twain employed in his effort to write realistically about social attitudes of the 1840s.
Not surprisingly, Professor Gribben’s decision to replace the word nigger with slave has engendered controversy.