When the classic novel "From Here to Eternity" was published in 1951, a few things were gone that had been in the original manuscript: explicit mentions of gay sex and a number of four-letter words.

The author, James Jones, objected to the changes at the time, arguing in a letter to his editor at Scribner that "the things we change in this book for propriety's sake will in five years, or ten years, come in someone else's book anyway." But eventually he gave in to his publisher.