Customer Reviews

Coral Island (Priory Classics)

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When I received the book, I was disappointed to note that it was not the author's original "integral text". A note from the publisher at the beginning of the book said that some parts had been edited out in the interest of readability and implied that perhaps some of the passages could have been objectionable from a religious point of view. Needless to say I was extremely sceptical, but read it nonetheless. The very end was clearly missing, and eventually, wondering what the original end had been like, I searched out the novel from the Gutenberg Project. Much to my surprise, the deleted parts were truly objectionable from a religious point of view, at least in my view. They represented a late nineteenth-century zealot missionary point of view with which very few readers in the twenty-first century would have any sympathy whatever. Since this novel is not what one would classify as important literature, I began to see the point of the deletions and am actually glad they were made. I believe the editors were especially justified in making these changes since the target audience consists for the most part of children who have little interest in nineteenth-century missionary zeal and will doubtless find it distracting and dull. I believe the edited version is distinctly better than the original particularly for the intended teen or child reader.