I'm reading Murder in Vienna by E.C. R. Lorac (published 1956), specifically the British Library Crime Classics paperback reprint (2024). At the beginning there's a standard boilerplate about how stereotypes and attitudes expressed in the book may not match publishing standards today etc.
However, it ends by saying, "therefore, the following novel is presented as it was originally published with two edits to the text and minor edits made for consistency of style and sense."
The consistency of style and sense part I get. I've done a bit of vintage manuscript editing myself and the majority of the work was in the vein of adding and removing commas. (BTW I'm not too impressed with the proofreading in this book collection; I've noticed several typos. But that's neither here not there lol)
It's the "two edits to the text" piece that's throwing my curiosity into overdrive. If they hadn't added the part about minor edits, I'd've assumed they were just removing slurs/words that have become slurs over time and replacing with a more appropriate word. But the phrasing makes me think there could be larger cuts/additions, perhaps up to a paragraph taken out? I tried googling it and got nothing, so I'm bringing the issue here. What do y'all think?
by falling_fire