Where and why did this chapter go?

November 25, 2005 5:01 AM

I have a 1940s English edition of Little Women which is missing an entire chapter. It hasn't been removed by accident - it was printed like that, and the chapters renumbered - yet nothing else in the book is abridged or altered, as far as I can tell. Why would an entire chapter be missing from this copy?

The English edition is published by Heirloom Library Limited; it's undated, but was given to my mother in 1949. The chapter that's missing is Chapter 10, 'The P.C. and P.O.'. In my English edition it skips that chapter altogether; Chapter 10 is 'Experiments', which is Chapter 11 in every other edition I've seen, including the one on Project Gutenberg. There's nothing else missing as far as I can tell, and nothing in the book itself indicates that it's abridged.

Are there any publishing/librarian/Alcott MeFites who might know why this chapter would be missing from my old edition? I'm rather intrigued, but I haven't been able to find any possible explanation online.

posted by andraste to Media & Arts (15 answers total)

Wartime rationing?

Or someone fucked up at the printing plant.
posted by the cuban at 5:19 AM on November 25, 2005

How is it bound? Does the chapter just happen to correspond to a. Ah. Don't know the correct term, but old/hardback books are sewn and the pages are folded together in groups. Does chapter 9 end one group and chapter 11 start another? If so, that particular bunch of pages could have been accidentally dropped in that one book.
posted by andrew cooke at 5:30 AM on November 25, 2005

Response by poster: I know what you mean, andrew cooke - but those chapters are all part of the same little folded bunch of papers. The page numbering flows, and that chapter is missing from the table of contents, too, so I think it was a deliberate decision to leave it out.

the cuban - hadn't thought of war rationing. Nice one!
posted by andraste at 5:34 AM on November 25, 2005

(Off-topic: the little booklets are called 'signatures'.)
posted by chrismear at 5:37 AM on November 25, 2005

Is it possible that the pages are all there, but the chapter heading just didn't get printed? Have you checked that there's actual story missing?
posted by raedyn at 6:04 AM on November 25, 2005

I've noticed that some books from that era are edited for content. It could be that the chapter was deemed offensive for children or perhaps (following the wartime idea) had content that could be interpreted as negative with respect to the war effort.
posted by medium format at 6:26 AM on November 25, 2005

i wondered that, but you can read it online at gutenberg, and it seemed ok to me.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:01 AM on November 25, 2005

Does it say in the frontspiece that it has been produced in accord with rationing requirements? Is the paper yellowed, crisp and with woodchips embedded? I don't know but I suspect rationing of paper was over by 1949
posted by A189Nut at 7:21 AM on November 25, 2005

It probably does have to do with wartime paper rationing, but I also notice (via Googling for "little women" abridged) that the book seems to have had a lot of abridged editions floating around for a very long time. Stuff that might be hard to swallow or understand for younger readers gets snipped. I haven't read Little Women in a very long time, but I remember, for example, an adult giving me a copy to read when I was a kid that basically had the whole back half of the book chopped out. I didn't find out until years later that Beth actually ends up dying.
posted by Gator at 7:32 AM on November 25, 2005

ooooooo spoiler alert! :o)

(and jo gets a sex change)
posted by andrew cooke at 7:39 AM on November 25, 2005

Maybe they thought the girls taking male identities in that chapter was inappropriate. Or that Laurie was hiding in the closet.
posted by neda at 8:05 AM on November 25, 2005

WHAT?? Oh, Beth... why, God, why?

;)
posted by BorgLove at 9:22 AM on November 25, 2005

Best answer: Most of that chapter is poetry, so taking out that chapter was probably the easiest way to abridge the book without losing the plot.
posted by teg at 9:57 AM on November 25, 2005

I found an old copy of "A Tale of Two Cities" in our library store (old library books they mark down to sell). It looked like it had been bound in the 1940s or 1950s.

I opened it up and every page was blank! I bought immediately it for $2.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 10:27 AM on November 25, 2005

Response by poster: raedyn: definitely actual story missing. It was one of my favourite books as a child and I was really surprised when I downloaded the Gutenberg text to find all this new stuff I'd never read.

A189Nut: it doesn't say anything about rationing requirements, and the paper is soft and creamy (albeit foxed)

I reckon teg is right, although I like neda's answer best :)
posted by andraste at 3:55 PM on November 25, 2005