As to the actual, announced limits of such changes, here's part of 
what the introduction says:
The editor's decision for this edition of Tom Sawyer has been to 
render the sixty-seven repetitions of the outcast's name as "Indian 
Joe" to assist in retiring another antiquated and insulting word 
(even though the very name "Indian" itself commemorates a misnomer 
dating back to Columbus). But the substitution of a merely 
informative racial sobriquet salvages Twain's ethnic innuendoes 
regarding the motivation for Indian Joe's animosity toward the town's 
residents. A total of seventeen miscellaneous usages of the I-word 
have similarly been altered in both novels. For the same reasons the 
eight references in Tom Sawyer to "half-breed" have been converted to 
"half-blood," which is less disrespectful and has even taken on a 
degree of panache since J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the 
Half-Blood Prince (2005). . . .
With the exception of the changes in racial denotations (and in two 
archaic references to skin color) and the insertion of the raftsmen 
passage, the texts of both novels otherwise follow the wording of the 
first American edition. Issues about questionable punctuation were 
resolved by consulting facsimiles of Twain's manuscripts. The editor 
has silently modernized certain eccentricities of nineteenth-century 
punctuation and spelling, and has given American spellings preference 
over British spellings. Obvious typographical errors introduced by 
the printers and inconsistent spellings have been corrected. Mark 
Twain occasionally added footnotes to his own books; here these are 
placed within the text and indicated by { } brackets.
RHH

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>Date:         Wed, 5 Jan 2011 11:32:55 -0600
>Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
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>From:         Kevin Mac Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Language and Art editing
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>>at what point
>>does the editing stop?
>>
>>Kit Barry
>>The Ephemera Archive for American Studies=
>
>In this edition I think the editing stops with substituting "slave" 
>for "nigger" and "Indian" for "Injun."  Somebody mentiioned the John 
>Wallace edition of HF, but I'd like to point out that he did much 
>more than a few word substitutions. I'll give just one example. In 
>the famous passage where Huck replies "No'm. Killed a nigger" that 
>entire sentence is deleted in Wallace's edition, with the result 
>that Huck simply replies "No'm" which in turn erases all the racism 
>out of Aunt Sally's response. I don't think any of us can endorse 
>that sort of defanging of Twain's text. But if all you do is 
>substitute the word "slave" in Huck's reply, the racist impact of 
>Aunt Sally's remark remains intact. There is co comparison between 
>this new edition and the Wallace edition.
>
>I've also seen a cyber-comment that Twain would never have allowed 
>his texts to be defanged. Nonsense! He did it all the time, usually 
>in response to Livy, or Howells, or after road-testing his texts 
>before an audience. In `Journalism in Tennessee' there's a newspaper 
>editor who is described as a "crawling insect" who is 
>"braying."  Really? An insect that brays? Jack-asses bray, not 
>insects, and in Twain's own copy of that printed text he corrected 
>the printed text back to "jack-ass." Without original manuscripts 
>and revised copies of his printed texts we may never know the full 
>extent of Twain's self-editing, or how much he allowed others to 
>fiddle with his texts. Twain's editing was not limited to word 
>choices. Didn't he leave out a chapter about lynching from one book 
>so as not to harm sales in the south?
>
>As Twain once remarked when the Concord Library banned HF, all of 
>the noise and chatter would probably just sell more copies. I hope 
>that's the result this time around. More readers for HF!!
>
>One last thought-- quibble as we may among ourselves, I hope we all 
>circle our wagons if the attacks on Al Gribben escalate. He is one 
>of us, a friend, a boon to Twain scholarship, and a good guy. I know 
>a good safe-house in Austin, Texas.
>
>Kevin
>@
>Mac Donnell Rare Books
>9307 Glenlake Drive
>Austin TX 78730
>512-345-4139
>Member: ABAA, ILAB
>*************************
>You may browse our books at
>www.macdonnellrarebooks.com
>
>
>
>
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