The Abbreviated Monte Cristo

Monte Cristo : A Play by Charles Fetcher, updated by James O'Neill (1883) Finally! I have located a book of the Charles Fetcher/James O'Neill play, Monte Cristo , to satisfy my curiosity! Some background: The Count of Monte Cristo , as a book, was an instant hit all over the world. Alexandre Dumas himself had adapted it for stage, but the results were not successful- it was too large and too long and required audiences to attend for 2 evenings. By 1868, Charles Fetcher had written a stage-play and starred in his own adaptation of Monte Cristo , which bombed. In 1870, Fetcher had further edited down the work. By 1883, James O'Neill had picked up the torch, playing Dantes onstage, and eventually buying up the rights to Fetcher's play.  O'Neill modified Fetcher's script, and the play became a hit, with O'Neill playing Edmond Dantes over 6,000 times in a 40 (!!!) year period. This version is still being performed...

Monte Cristo Wording Comparisons in Different Editions: First Paragraph So you're in an antique or used book store, and you spot a vintage edition of The Count of Monte Cristo . Or you're browsing ebooks and you spot one with a different cover. Do you have that one already? Is the text content different from what you already have? Is it abridged? Is it something unique? Where did it really come from? What IS it? Let me help you! There ARE wording differences between the famous 1846 Chapman-Hall translation, and its various abridged offspring, new translations or new re-worded adaptations! So these random dusty tomes or ebooks from unknown companies can usually be identified by looking at the first paragraph on the first page. Who knows! Maybe you're finding something good, or avoiding something not-so-good (e.g. Standard Abridged Edition).  You can find my complete book recommendations here: Go to: Monte Cristo Abridged for Teens and Adults It...

"The Sultan of Monte Cristo" by Holy Ghost Writer (2013) "Holy Ghost Writer" is a pen name for an anonymous writer who sought to expand the Universe of Monte-Cristo by writing a series of books, starting in 2012-2013 that was supposed to take Edmond Dantes from his original adventure in The Count of Monte Cristo into the future with his descendants. It was a very ambitious goal, but remains unfulfilled. After a flurry of activity in 2013, and two books in 2015, HGW's Monte Cristo output died down. But more on this topic later. HGW's first book of the series is an abridged version of Dumas' original, with some Sherlock Holmes/Dr.Watson chatter inserted, so the book can be sold as The Count of Monte Cristo as Retold by Sherlock Holmes . For a complete review of that book, read it here (scroll to the final review on the page). Go to: Monte Cristo Abridged for Teens and Adults The Count and his new wife, Haydee are headed to Alban...

The Hand of the Dead by Alfredo Hogan (1854) La Mano del Muerto (Spanish) A Mão do Finado (Portuguese) La main du défunt by F. LePrince (French) How and when did all these 19th century rip-offs/wretched sequels get their start? Somewhere around 1854, a mysterious "new" book appeared, first in Portuguese, called A Mão do Finado , which roughly translates to The Hand of the Dead/Deceased/Dead Man. It confused a lot of people, claiming to be The Count of Monte Cristo, Part 2: The Hand of the Dead , with no author attributed. The unfortunates who read the book vented their outrage by writing to Alexandre Dumas who was still alive at the time!!! Dumas repudiated and denounced it, calling it "repulsive" and "a bad book". Eventually, the true author's name was revealed: Portuguese postal worker Alfredo Hogan, who moonlighted as a novelist and playwright. But later editions, even to the current day, credit the book as written by "...

Monte Cristo's Daughter by Edmund Flagg (1886) And... continuing the story of Zuleika and the Monte Cristo clan, we have Edmund Flagg's book, Monte Cristo's Daughter. On its own title page, the book untruthfully hypes itself as: "a wonderfully brilliant, original, exciting and absorbing novel."🤣 Read review of Book I (Flagg) To be fair, it is an improvement over Flagg's first book of the set, Edmond Dantes. The 1848 Revolution is over, and all those ho-hum Revolutionary figures are gone, and so are their political monologues. Now Flagg can get around to the Monte Cristo Family Drama, soap-opera-ish tidbits that he dropped in the last few chapters of Edmond Dantes without properly setting the scene. What's all this about a broken friendship? Scandal? A crime? An oath to silence? How did this all start? To do this, the story needs to rewind to one year prior , when Zuleika was 15, which might be 1847 (it can't be! Zuleika wo...

Edmond Dantes by Edmund Flagg (1884) There's never been any shortage of Monte-Cristo related books by other authors, popping up like mushrooms quickly in the wake of Dumas' massive success. Most of these spinoff books went out of print a century ago, but thanks to their status as "public domain" and digitizing services, and Internet sites like Gutenberg.Org, Archive.Org, the Library of Congress and the Hathi Trust, these books now have a second life, available for free to anyone willing to go deeper into the rabbit-hole. For those searching for more of the magic of Monte Cristo: prepare to be disappointed. Very disappointed. And... further scraping to the bottom of the barrel, we have American author Edmund Flagg's book, Edmond Dantes . It is Book I of Flagg's Monte Cristo sequels. It rather conceitedly declares itself as: " Edmond Dantes , one of the greatest novels ever written"; "the plot is phenomenal in its strength, meri...

The Son of Monte Cristo, Vol. II by Jules Lermina (1881) Jules Lermina Back for more agony? Must know what the Lermina-verse has in store for the Count of Monte Cristo? I have the full scoop! I read this entire piece of trash so you don't have to! For people looking for Part 1 of my Jules Lermina book review, it's on a separate page and you can read it here! Read review of Book I (Lermina) By the way, there are 1940's era movies also titled "The Son of Monte Cristo" and "The Wife of Monte Cristo". These have nothing to do with the books by Jules Lermina. The movies are Hollywood productions with their own screenplays and writers, capitalizing on the success of the none-too-book-accurate 1934 movie, "The Count of Monte Cristo" starring Robert Donat.  BOOK II: Part 3: Fanfaro "The Adventures of Fanfaro" follows the new main-character that we'd JUST MET. None of this involves The Count, Haydee, or ...