A review of new editions of Dahl’s books have edited passages relating to weight, mental health, gender and race.

The changes made by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Random House, first were reported by Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Augustus Gloop is no longer “enormously fat”, just “enormous”.

In the new edition of Witches, a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business” instead of as a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman”.

The word “black” has removed from the description of the terrible tractors in The Fabulous Mr. Fox, with the machines now described as “murderous, brutal-looking monsters”.

“If we start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society,” PEN America chief executive Suzanne Nossel said.

Dahl died in 1990, at the age of 74.

Dozens of 20th century non-fiction titles deemed ‘historically inaccurate or offensive’ have been removed from the Northcote High School library in Melbourne, as part of a push to decolonise the school’s book collection.

Texts that refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as nomads or hunter-gatherers, or that depict European colonisation as peaceful and omit reference to frontier conflict, are among those that were cut from the school’s collection.

Victoria’s school librarians’ association, which is developing a “diversity toolkit” for schools seeking to update their collections, said Northcote had set an example for other schools to follow. Northcote has also encouraged other schools to follow its lead.

Cataloguing and spine labels with the three-letter categorisation ABO were also removed.