I guess there’s also the line between when is something a historical artifact as opposed to just a text with information. Nowadays we digitize everything, and have copies of copies of stuff. In the 19th century they could definitely mass produce books, but still a book was where legitimate data was stored. If you find that an old text is fading or otherwise is seen as needing clarity, it might not be seen as very crazy to just update your stuff.

Not that I like it. But I wonder how different the perspective was of the guy who did it