A century after his death, Mark Twain is being "sivilized" just like his hero Huck Finn. A new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn omits a racial epithet that has caused controversy since the book took its place decades ago on the shelf of great American literature. In place of the word n ———— -, which appears 219 times in Twain's text, the word "slave" will be substituted in a combined edition of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, to be published next month by NewSouth Books.Many Twain scholars can't stand it. But Alan Gribben, professor of English at Auburn University-Montgomery, says his new edition is not for them. It's for readers who cannot get past the slur to take in the rest of the book — and thereby understand Twain's opposition to racism/Martha T. Moore, USA Today. More here.

 

Question: Was it right for Prof Gribben to replace Mark Twain's hyper-offensive N-word in the original "Huckleberry Finn" with the word "slave"?