The Abbreviated Monte Cristo

 The Abbreviated Monte Cristo Everything you've ever wanted to know about Abridged editions, Children's editions, Comics and Manga and Movie versions of The Count of Monte Cristo It's an age-old question, "I've heard of/someone recommended to me/I've seen the movie The Count of Monte Cristo , and I want to read the book now! There's so many different ones floating around! Which one should I get?" The answer is not exactly easy or obvious. Different audiences have different needs, expectations and desires. The actual Alexandre Dumas novel was written in 1844 in French, and was quickly translated into English. The most famous unabridged English edition was done in 1846, and published by Chapman-Hall and is in public domain and is available for free on the Internet . Alternatively, there is a revised, re-translated unabridged edition by R...

Section Two: Monte Cristo for Kids Ah! Children's editions! Since The Count of Monte Cristo is almost 200 years old, and by a famous author, it's been adapted many times into a child-friendly package, perfect for a bedtime story! Classics Illustrated has set the bar pretty high- by proving that the entire novel, with subplots, can be shoehorned into less than 100 pages. The children's text editions have a tendency to do away with the violence, emphasize Dantes' imprisonment and escape, and cut corners on the "revenge" part. Some add child-friendly humorous scenes, have radical "re-interpretations" of the events and/or add manufactured happy endings (usually involving Dantes/The Count getting back together with Mercedes). They also draw strict lines between good/evil, with the protagonist, Dantes, as "good" and the Villefort/Fernand/Danglars trio as "evil".  I've done a site-wid...

Section Three: Monte Cristo in Comics and Manga "A picture is worth a thousand words". I like comics. If I wish to discover great literature, I am not ashamed at all to head for a copy "Classics Illustrated" to get the general gist of a story. If I like it, I could read the actual book. If I hated it, then maybe one hour is "lost" and not several days of reading through tomes of dense text, only to be sorely upset and disappointed at the ending, Comics are a very visual medium, and The Count of Monte Cristo has little physical action but a lot of psychological warfare. Comics publishers understandably try to make the story appear "more exciting" so they add pages of sword fighting or knife fighting, at the cost of plot-essential developments ("Jumbo Comics", "Dell Four Color" #794, "Marvel Classics Comics"). The "what's disposable" and "what's essential...