The assignment: Go through our publication list (from Day One!) and look at the accompanying covers. Choose six books and reprint them, EXACTLY AS THEY WERE THEN, as a small collection to celebrate our sixty years in business.
What is the problem? Let's scroll further down the page, shall we?
Now for the books: Remember, our intention was to publish the stories in their original form. But once we immersed ourselves in the text, our eyes grew wide. Our jaws dropped. Social behavior—such as hitting a woman—that would be considered totally unacceptable now was quite common sixty years ago. Scenes of near rape would not sit well with a contemporary audience, we were quite convinced. We therefore decided to make small adjustments to the text, only in cases where we felt scenes or phrases would be offensive to a 2009 readership. Also, grammar and spelling standards have changed quite a bit in sixty years. But that did entail a text edit, which we had not anticipated. AND, we had to clear those adjustments with the current copyright holders, if we had been able to locate them.
(underlining by me)
It smells of irony, and (sadly) censorship. I believe that in this case, the publisher has no interest in the readers, only in its public image and the money that it could potentially rake in.