Making classic novels more accessible for modern readers

I had never heard of Angela Brazil before I went looking for more “school stories” for my children, who were hooked on Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers series. It was the middle of the pandemic, and, with our library closed and funds a little tight to feed my bookworms’ ferocious appetites, I turned to books in the public domain through Gutenberg. I thoroughly enjoyed Brazil’s books, but I knew that my children, and their friends, would be tripped up by many of the antiquated words that even I had to look up.

The Nicest Girl in the School was originally published in 1910, and set perhaps just a year or two before that, which places it firmly in the Edwardian era. Girls such as the characters in this book would have enjoyed a society that was much more relaxed and exciting than the stricter Victorian era their parents experienced. The Women’s Suffrage Movement had just begun to gain traction after many decades of groundwork (though it would still be nearly a decade before the vote was allowed for women over thirty and nearly two decades before women and men had equal voting rights). New innovations such as the telephone and motor cars were about to become commonplace. The Great War was still several years away.

After noting a handful of reviews on Goodreads slating the main character of The Nicest Girl for being a “Mary-Sue”, I took a closer look at what readers were complaining about. As an experienced editor, I decided to edit and re-publish The Nicest Girl as I could see that this issue was simple to address to create a story that would resonate more with modern readers who were no longer looking for a “moral” tale. In fact, I'm almost certain that Angela Brazil herself was not keen on including the moralising that found its way into her book, but it was required of books written for children at the time, and so she had no choice if she wanted to be published. I sense this because of the patchy manner in which she added scenes of “correct” responses and behaviour.

The essence of the era in which The Nicest Girl was set is fully retained, and much of the advanced vocabulary, but I considered it worthwhile to improve the flow of the story and add subtle explanations or word changes to make it a little more understandable to readers of the 21st Century. Merely adding footnotes would make the text too clunky for young readers to follow. 

Stories in the 19th and early 20th Century were deliberately slower-paced than later books that had to compete with movies and television. Given the relatively high cost of books, and without other forms of instant entertainment to distract them, readers expected to spend many days engrossed in a novel, the plot stretched out by a long-winded, meandering narrative. As I mentioned, I also subtly recharacterised the protagonist, who has been criticised in reviews for being too saint-like in her devotion to her cousin and her “mission”, and not a character who is easy to identify with. The clues to what Angela Brazil might really have wished for this character were already there in the text, and I gave her a more rounded personality by inserting some jealousy and envy on her part. I think it makes sense that a poorer, plainer girl might envy a wealthy, attractive one - but in the 1900s that would have been sinful to reveal so explicitly.

When editing older novels to remove offensive language or attitudes, there is a risk of sanitizing or “whitewashing” history. It's worth striking a balance between making the work accessible while still acknowledging the problematic elements of the original text – “lampshading” these, in effect, and perhaps calling them out instead of simply erasing them. In the edited version of The Nicest Girl that I published, I did choose to remove a reference to the n-word, because it had no purpose whatsoever and did not change the meaning of the passage it was in. Specifically, it was not used as a slur and it was not directed at a character of colour; it was simply a word in use at the time and I’m sure Angela Brazil would not have included it had she been alive and writing in our era. But I do make a note in the Afterword that she did use the word and, sure, readers can still judge her as racist on one word, if they see fit. But children do not need to be exposed to the word while reading an old book.

As for my own children, they love “their” edition of The Nicest Girl in the School – I’ve read it aloud to them, and they’ve taken their copies and reread them several times. And they’re eagerly awaiting the next adventures of The Nicest Girl, which, since Angela Brazil didn’t write any more, I will adapt on her behalf. I’m bringing a fresh take on Angela Brazil’s stories to a new group of young readers, but her original works are still forever available, untouched and for free. Nothing lost, so much given. Much like the Grimm Brothers who collected fairy tales and repurposed them into printed books, and then Disney who further developed those stories into versions almost unrecognisable from the originals. It's a shame we've lost the names of the original storytellers of our fairy tales; at least now we have better records of our public domain works and can bring new life to those. With digital publishers, there's plenty of room for authors of every era to exist side-by-side. Older voices deserve to be heard, again, too.

Elle Carter Neal is the author of the middle grade fantasy The Convoluted Key (first in the Draconian Rules series), the picture book I Own All the Blue, and teen science-fantasy novel Madison Lane and the Wand of Rasputin (first in the Grounded series). She is the editor of the re-release of Angela Brazil's 1910 book The Nicest Girl in the School. Elle is based in Melbourne, Australia. Find her at ElleCarterNeal.com.

Photo by Amanda Meryle Photography

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