I personally would not call someone “a female”, for the reductive reasons you mention. I also would not change the words of a dead author to reflect modern usa

I personally would not call someone “a female”, for the reductive reasons you mention. I also would not change the words of a dead author to reflect modern usage because I enjoy stepping into a the past and seeing how people used to write. Plus there is the alliteration, which is really the clincher here: those who edited this are philistines. (Not throwing anything at you, webjunkie. You merely explained the change without opining on it. Just commenting in general.)