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As I understand it, bowdlerization is the removal from literature of words, phrases, or narrative that can be considered morally questionable or problematic, for the purposes of making the experience of reading the work suitable for all audiences.

So, the fact that this edition publishes Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn together, or even that it restores a deleted scene would not seem, to me at least, to detract from the applicability of calling the removal of the words "nigger" and "injun" bowdlerization. Especially since the stated motivation of those edits is, essentially, to make the work more suitable for all audiences.

I actually have taught such texts, to high school students and to college undergrads. I've taught, among other things, Huckleberry Finn, as well as The Miller's Tale (and other tales) from The Canterbury Tales, Miller's Tropic of Cancer, selections from Anais Nin's diaries, Catcher In The Rye, Ginsberg's Howl, selections from Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, some Heinlein, and even selections from Mein Kampf-- all usual suspects on banned book lists, for obscene language, sexuality, and the use of derogatory language and racial or ethnic slurs.

I have always found that an important part of the learning process for students is the opportunity to confront difficult language and problematic attitudes in art directly, and to have to deal directly with the questions of what language means, and what do we really mean by "freedom of speech." Some of the best classroom discussions I have ever been able to evoke as a teacher came from students wrestling with these works of literature, and the difficulties they had with those words and ideas.

I have yet to have had a student who engaged in these discussions who told me that they were not the better for it.

Ultimately, I truly believe that people must be able to confront art and literature directly if they are going to be able to make real decisions about what they think and how they feel about art, literature, and even society, given that society is so deeply influenced by art and literature. I think that well-intentioned editing in the attempt to make the uncomfortable more comfortable does a tremendous disservice to readers and students everywhere.

Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn well after the Civil War, and the man was not unfamiliar with black people. He knew very well that even in the time of its writing, it was declassè to use the word nigger instead of negro. He used the word anyway, and certainly not because he was a racist and longed for the days of slavery. But whether he used it for authenticity, as an emphasis of what society had been like in the antebellum South, or whether he used it as a deliberate vulgarity, to shock, or whether it was for some artistic reason other than those, that was the choice he made. He could well have used the word negro, or the word slave instead.

The decision, a century after Twain's death, to alter his choice for the sake of making students comfortable, seems not only counterproductive educationally, but also very unlikely to serve the artistic agenda of the author. In either case, I fail to see why it is appropriate, and not ridiculous.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)