Re: _The Hundred and One Dalmatians_ racist?

On 2024-10-07, Joel Polowin <jpolowin@sympatico.ca> wrote:

I recently ran across a review (https://youtu.be/1GxzNj8HO-k?t=788)
which compared the original Dodie Smith book _The Hundred and One
Dalmations_ with the 1961 Disney animated adaptation, _One Hundred and
One Dalmatians_.  It noted that the original book had some extremely
racist comments, referring to "sneaky awful black-eyed gipsies".  (This
is in chapter 14 of the book.)
>
But my copy of the book _One Hundred and One Dalmatians_ (with the
altered title, and an image from the Disney movie on the cover) doesn't
have that.  The worst comment that my book makes is that "gipsies
sometimes stole valuable dogs"  And the gipsies do indeed try to capture
the dogs.
>
My guess is that the book was tweaked a bit for the post-Disney
publication.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a copy of the
book that was published pre-1961.  (It's also possible that the changes
were due to the book's North American publication, vs. the original U.K.
release.) The copies at archive.org are no longer available; the
passages available in Google Books don't include that chapter.
Interlibrary loan was unsuccessful — although I found a library that had
it, relatively close to where I live, the library then removed the book
from their catalogue.  I guess they discovered that the book was missing
from their collection when they tried to find it for me.
>
Do any of you have a pre-Disney (i.e. pre-1961) copy of the book?  I'm
interested in comparing the two book versions, or at least that section
of them.
>
Thanks,
Joel

From Goodreads, it originally was serialized in _Woman's Day_ as "The
Great Dog Robbery".  There are full digital archives of this magazine,
but I didn't investigate how freely they are accessible (eg ProQuest).

I did see one 1957 copy on sale for $66, but that's going to extremes
for the sake of curiousity!

Good luck!
Chris