Censorship in A Farewell to Arms

[Jacob Garber]

I am reading A Farewell to Arms and noticed that some words are censored with dashes here and there. The original publication of the novel was riddled with censorship and omission (as this article describes), and though it was mostly restored for the American publication some remains. Is it worthwhile to restore these remaining redactions?

Thanks,

Jacob

[Alex Cabal]

No, we typically leave those as is in print.

On 9/18/25 10:24 PM, Jacob Garber wrote:
> I am reading /A Farewell to Arms/ and noticed that some words are

> censored with dashes here and there. The original publication of the
> novel was riddled with censorship and omission (as this article

> <https://www.booksontrial.com/a-farewell-to-arms-all-the-dirty-words-
> you-wont-find-in-the-novel/> describes), and though it was mostly

> restored for the American publication some remains. Is it worthwhile to
> restore these remaining redactions?
>
> Thanks,
> Jacob
>

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[Guilherme Simões]

Sorry if this was already discussed elsewhere but why is that?

I recently read The Blue Castle and found a couple of "d⸺d" that I assumed to mean "fucked" (it was "damned" instead).

At the time I thought there was an issue with my book. Only later after searching for it did I understand that it was a censored word (https://english.stackexchange.com/q/477806). Why keep this as is?

[Alex Cabal]

Because that's how it was in print, it's an artifact of the era. Sometimes it's possible to guess with certainty what the word was meant to be, and other times not.