Elizabite: The Story of the Book - Part VI

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

           Harper and Row reissued H. A. Rey’s Elizabite in the fall of 1962. The copyright date on the book’s verso remained 1942. There was no mention of a second edition, nor that the book had been revised, yet a major editorial change had been made from the 1942 version. An examination of Rey’s original color separations for the 1942 book tells the story. For the new edition, Rey carefully cut out the head of Mary, the black maid, from the pages where she appeared in the 1942 book, and on each taped patch he painted a Caucasian woman’s face. Her striped stockings and black arms were also erased, painted over in peachy/white tones.

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

 

McCain Library and Archives
University of Southern Mississippi

          Rey's decision to change the maid Mary's race in the 1962 revision is explained in a letter he wrote to Ursula Nordstrom in 1973. "Remember when we changed Mary, the maid from colored to white to avoid the opprobrium of racism?” he wrote. “Well the other day a bright Radcliff girl was looking at the book and I told her that story and she said,   ‘Now with women’s lib[eration], won’t you want to have a butler or a man-servant instead of a maid cleaning up?”
       Rey closed the letter with a drawing of a butler and a rhyme. “The butler Jeeves comes with a broom to tidy up the messy room.”

 “Elizabite: The Story of the Book” is based on “From Elizabite to Spotty: The Reys, Race and Consciousness Raising,” an essay published in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 35, #4, Winter 2012.