The Abbreviated Monte Cristo

Section One Supplement: How to Identify a "Standard Abridged Edition" of The Count of Monte Cristo [Anonymous] Translator’s Note: The prevailing taste for brevity has made the spacious days of the stately three-volume novel seem very remote indeed. A distinct prejudice against length now exists: a feeling that there is a necessary antithesis between quantity and quality. One of the results is that those delightfully interminable romances which beguiled the nights and days of our ancestors in so pleasant a fashion are now given no more than a passing nod of recognition. [...]   This, then, is felt to be sufficient apology for the present abridgement of one of the world’s masterpieces. It has been the object of the editor to provide the modern reader with a good translation and a moderately condensed version of Dumas’ narrative. This, while omitting, of ne...

Section One: Text abridgements meant for Teens and Adults This section describes and reviews the various text abridgements of the novel, intended for teens and adults. Basically, the editors had approached the problem of reducing the original novel's length in several different ways: Removing a few lines or paragraphs within chapters Reducing chapters to summary paragraphs Hacking out entire chapters and removing some subplots and characters It's pretty consistent that certain in-book events were considered "disposable" by some editors and not by others. The following bits are the ones that are often removed: Dantes saves his old friends, the Morrel family, from financial ruin. Franz D'Epinay and Albert de Morcerf go to Rome and have the adventure of a lifetime. Villefort’s affair and secret illegitimate baby Caderousse murders the jeweler Maximilian Morrel and Va...