“Agatha Christie novels have been rewritten for modern sensitivities, The Telegraph can reveal.
“Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries have had original passages reworked or removed in new editions published by HarperCollins.
“The character of a British tourist venting her frustration at a group of children has been purged from a recent reissue, while a number of references to people smiling and comments on their teeth and physiques, have also been erased.
“…
“The author’s own narration, often through the inner monologue of Miss Jane Marple or Hercule Poirot, has been altered in many instances. Sections of dialogue uttered by often unsympathetic characters within the mysteries have also been cut.
“In the 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that ‘they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children’.
“This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: ‘They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children’.
“Vocabulary has also been altered, with the term ‘Oriental’ removed. Other descriptions have been altered in some instances, with a black servant, originally described as grinning as he understands the need to stay silent about an incident, described as neither black nor smiling but simply as ‘nodding’.
“…
“Dialogue in Christie’s 1920 debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles has been altered, so where Poirot once noted that another character is “a Jew, of course”, he now makes no such comment.
“In the same book, a young woman described as being of gypsy type’ is now simply ‘a young woman’, and other references to gypsies have been removed from the text.
“The 1979 collection Miss Marple’s Final Cases and Two Other Stories includes the character of an Indian judge who grows angry demanding his breakfast in the original text with ‘his Indian temper’, a phrase now changed to say ‘his temper’.
“References to ‘natives’ have also been removed or replaced with the word ‘local’.”
