Les Miz Book Abridgements

Les Miz in Book Abridgements (for Teens, Y.A., Grownups and Dummies)

In my search for "the perfect abridgement" of Les Miserables, the problem all boils down to this: Only Children's and Young Adult versions of the book had been re-written with fully modern style and vocabulary. Every other abridgement, particularly the ones aimed at adults, are ALL edited versions of a 19th Century English translation, mainly Charles Wilbour's 1862 one.

It's in the unabridged translations where there's a huge variety of language choices from original to ultra-modern. But of course, being unabridged, those all have over a thousand pages and include the "digressions" in-full and a good deal of Victor Hugo's ramblings. So it's like this... you want: a) Modernized Language b) Abridged c) Contains all of the Major and Minor Plot points. Choose TWO.

There's certain story-based events that are present in some versions, but not others. Personally, I'd want to see as many of these as possible, so these have become the Plot Points Table. I've also included a bullet list of certain writing style aspects that are unwanted and unwelcome, IMHO- artifacts of old 19th century translations that were sometimes carried-over to modern abridgements.

• Place Name Censorship: "Bishop of Digne" is censored as "Bishop of D-". "Montreuil-sur-Mer" as "M-sur-M-".
• Language Style: Several abridged books contain words that are no longer in standard usage, untranslated French words/sentences or long, complicated sentences that need to be read twice to comprehend it. A reader of an abridged work doesn't have time for that. Keep it simple.
  
• Victor Hugo Rhetorical Questions (VHRQ): It drives me up the wall. There are multiple instances in the text where Hugo asks (the reader) inane questions like, "Where is he/she going?" "Where was he/she?" "What was he/she doing?" "Why is that here?" Hmmmpf, you tell me, Victor Hugo! I have no idea. I'm a noob and I've never been here before. You're the one telling me the story, not me! 
  

Les Miserables. 530 pages, (editor unknown). 1910?, pub. Ward Lock and Co Ltd. (UK). Word count: Approx 259,000. Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wraxall) VHRQ: present This is simply awful. It's based on the Wraxall translation, and edited down to only 530 pages, but damn, each page is a chore! Not only do readers have to deal with antiquated English, but antiquated British English and even British slang, which has a very different vocabulary and style. I never thought I'd say this, but suddenly the Wilbour translation sounds far more appealing and understandable.  Translation quirks, some Wraxall, some not (and worse): Pervy AF: The Thenn's daughters playing on an improvised swing, right outside the inn. In public! "Their innocent faces had a look of surprise; [...] and the younger displayed her nudity with the chaste indecency of childhood." (⮜This is straight from Wraxall and adds a layer of sick pedo shit.) More uncomfortably questionable wording in this book re: Mayor Madeleine's attempts to find a volunteer to help old Fauchelevent stuck under a cart: "Is there anyone here who has strong loins?" (⮜koff, koff. Hoping to find a manly man who wants to boast of his...virility?) Wilbour: "Is there nobody here who has strength and courage?" Eponine demonstrates her writing skills: "Here are the slops." (⮜does she mean farm animal feed? Food for humans that's barely edible? A chamber pot?) Wilbour: "The cognes are here" with cognes usually explained as "the police".   Gavroche, after hearing that 2 lost boys can't find their parents: "You didn't ought to turn grown-up people out to grass in that way." (⮜what? Not Wraxall.) Wilbour: "It's stupid to get lost like that for people of any age."  And then people hail one another with "Hilloh", which seems to be some form of "Hey!" or "Hello". This book also has excessively LONG chapters. Too many different chapters from the original, with entirely different characters and plot threads were jammed together to make super-sized chapters. Example: Waterloo (one long paragraph), The Battlefield at Night, the ship Orion, Boulatruelle snooping around looking for buried treasure, and the Thenns sending Cosette to get water in a scary dark forest... is all ONE CHAPTER! And, there's just way too much untranslated French. Would be nice to know what Gavroche is singing about. And Valjean's gravestone epitaph is present, but in French only. We should be deeply moved, if only we knew what it said!😡 Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (Yes) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (Yes) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes)  The Verdict: Not recommended. The reason to read an abridged Les Miserables is to speed things up and enjoy the story, without all of the side-details and "digressions". This book is hard-going. Common questions while reading, "How's that again? What the heck did that mean?" (looks up a different translation) "Ohhh..." It's very difficult to read to the point of being torturous, and you WILL need a dictionary. ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✅ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ✅ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✅ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None. It's based on an old, British translation that's not fully comprehensible to a modern audience not born or raised in the UK.

Les Miserables. 610 pages, (editor unknown). 1925, pub. Dodd Mead & Co. Word count: Approx 283,000. Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour) VHRQ: present From the SAME people who brought us the "Standard Abridged Edition" of Monte Cristo! Illustrations by the great Mead Schaeffer, too! It has an introduction, penned by one "R.T.B.", justifying the reasons for abridgement. It goes, "Here, in this shortened version, is retained the magic of Hugo's style (there has been no rewriting, no tampering with the words as he set them down)". Uh oh... I already see a problem. Victor Hugo's words were in French, and this is an English-language book. Whatever's in this book is not what Victor Hugo set down- these are the words of a translator! But which one?   Quick scan- This is an abridged version of the Wilbour translation. Every word here was lifted verbatim from Wilbour with no attempt at modernizing the language. So already, it has one strike against it: At least Dodd Mead's Monte Cristo had a language overhaul, improving readability! This heavily redacts Fantine's decline and fall. While it details her initial meeting with the Thenns and dropping Cosette off to them, all it mentions next is that she arrived in M-Sur M-. We don't hear about her for quite a while, until one of the town dandys torments a bedraggled, sickly woman who's missing some teeth, "walking back and forth before the window of the officer's cafe". It's Fantine, and we have NO IDEA how she got into this state. Book "Cosette" starts with 26 total pages about Waterloo... more than most abridged versions. The last 8 pages about Thenn saving Colonel Pontmercy are worth reading. The rest is totally skippable. Predictably, all of Victor Hugo's anti-convent rants were deleted. Over 40 pages are devoted to the whole Valjean "Convent Coffin Caper". It just goes on and on. That really made me appreciate Isabel Fortey's more sprightly editing in her 1922 abridgement. The Cosette and Marius love story suffers from over-flowery language, another artifact of Wilbour's translation. It's tedious and gag-inducing. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (Yes) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (No) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (No)  The Verdict: With over 600 pages, in theory, it could have be laser-focused on telling the story. But the editing is poor- "R.T.B" had a bad sense of "what's important vs. what's disposable". The only good thing about it is being "the Wilbour translation, but less of it and minus the digressions". Zzzzzzz. ❌ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ❌ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ❌ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ✅ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✅ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✂ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None. But has bad editing.

Les Miserables (Designed to be read as a modern novel). 505 pages, (editor unknown). 1943, pub. Book League of America. Word count: Approx 348,000. Reprinted: 2006 Borders Classics, 645 pages. Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour) VHRQ: present From The Book League of America, and delivers exactly what's promised: A Wilbour translation that's meant to be read as a novel. I won't really fault them for this work... it is truly Wilbour, but skillfully edited and aimed at an adult audience. So I recognize why it retains words, style and sentence structure that are now out-of-date. This is acceptable, with the intended readership (post-WWII adults) and not children (I consider palming off edits of Wilbour's work, with its adult-level vocabulary rqmts, as unacceptable for kids). The typesetting and margins were designed to maximize the amount of text that can be crammed into 505 pages, so I estimate that this edition of Les Miz is 60% intact, which is very respectable. For a book of this length and word count, this has now set the standard for completeness of the major and minor Plot Points. It even has some of the "digressions", but edited down to a tolerable length: The Bishop of Digne: 17 pages Waterloo, with some of the battle descriptions, including Thenn saving Pontmercy: 10 pages The austerities of convent life at Petit-Picpus: 2 pages "A Few Pages of History" (Louis Philippe): 5 pages The Sewers: 12 pages until Valjean meets Thenn again. This might be the first of the abridged books I'd read that includes the superstition of the "Evil One", prowling the woods near Montfermeil (right before Valjean spots Cosette with the water bucket). The battle at the barricades is present and complete, including Victor Hugo's sad ruminations about the final collapse of the barricade and his belief that Progress will eventually win out, and the revolt ends with Enjolras and Grantaire executed by firing squad. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (Yes) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (Yes) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes)  The Verdict: This particular edition does a great job for what it is: Wilbour-lite. If you're going to read Wilbour, it may as well be this one, as it provides a complete Les Miz story and edits the "digressions" to the bare minimum- not that they were truly necessary for the story to begin with. If I wanted to see any improvements, I think this needed more chapter breaks. Chapters are too long and compile too many disparate story threads and should have been separated. More translations of French songs, quotes and argot would have also been helpful. Otherwise, with a hypothetical wording and style update, this could be the basis for a totally awesome abridged modern version of Les Miz that hits ALL of the major and minor Plot Points, without the disjointedness and obvious censorship that exists in some others (Dodd Mead, James K. Robinson, etc.). Note: A modern reprint, under Borders Classics, has a larger page count. Content is identical. The increase in pages can be attributed to bigger margins and wider line-spacing. ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✅ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ✅ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✅ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None.

Les Miserables. 336 pages, adapted by Mabel Dodge Holmes. 1946, pub. Laidlaw Brothers and also by College Entrance Book Co. Removes the place-name censorship. Town names spelled out in-full Language style is Modern VHRQ: Deleted Putting things into proper perspective, modern-language versions of Les Miz were non-existent in 1946, when Ms. Holmes undertook this project. Every abridged version (for people above elementary-school level) was directly taken from either Wilbour or Wraxall, using their wording. Ms. Holmes' noble intention was to make Les Miz accessible to post-War young people (teens), and she completely revamped it using Modern English. After all, she also did a standup job with adapting The Count of Monte Cristo for young people. Her work in books "Fantine" and "Cosette" is stellar. It doesn't read like a children's novelization at all, and even adults should not feel ashamed of reading at this level. It has all the right details and reads beautifully. There are several instances where chapters are moved around and characters and events appear in a different place than they were in the original book. However, books "Marius" and "St. Denis" were combined here into "Book 3: Marius". And by keeping most of Marius' character arc and his love story with Cosette and the excitement of The Ambush, something had to give. And the cost was the almost complete deletion of the Marius' wishy-washy overly-flexible political beliefs, and the skimpy intros (if any) of Gavroche, Patron Minette, and the ABCs. Of the latter, only Enjolras, Combeferre and Courfeyrac rated a mention. This, plus completely botching their motivations as: "Marius and his friends [...] wished to restore the Empire, with Napoleon's son as Emperor." (⮜say what? Noooooo!😡Not true at all!) The good news is that the high quality returns with "Book 4: Jean Valjean". Coverage is excellent for all of the major events in there, and it even includes little tidbits omitted from other abridgements, such as Javert's hunt for Thenn that led them to the gate of the sewers. In conclusion, this book's strengths completely lie in books, "Fantine", "Cosette" and "Jean Valjean". The editing and use of language is superb. But the "adapted" account of the ABCs intentions and conflating "the Empire" with "the Republic" is inaccurate and unacceptable. So my personal thoughts are to skip the merged books "Marius/St. Denis" and then switch over to the later, and more accurate Mary Ansaldo version. And for the final stretch, "Jean Valjean", both Ansaldo and Holmes are good. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (No) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (No)  ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✂ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ✅ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✅ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✂ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: Everything is great, except for the little details about exactly who and what Marius and his ABC friends were fighting for!

Les Miserables. 372 pages, (editor unknown), 1954, pub. The Literary Guild of America and International Collector's Library (both copyrighted by the John C. Winston Company). Word count: Approx 212,000. Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour) VHRQ: present This might get confusing. The 1954 book was simultaneously published by two different companies, with identical typesetting. There is a 393 page variant that has line drawn illustrations that are not particularly artistic or well done. The 1954 copyright is only claimed for "special features and frontpiece" but not for the text- implying that the text itself was already in public domain. And just to make things more complicated, International Collector's Library published a different abridgement in 1964, with the abridgement and editing credited to Paul Benichou, and the entire contents copyrighted under Simon and Schuster. I find this to be a generally good edit of the Wilbour translation. However, there are some missing portions that were just not a good idea to delete, because they were important and had a ripple effect later on. Without seeing the cause, the effect and consequences of later (and critical) events just don't make any sense. Gone: The part where Mayor Madeleine (Valjean) rescues old Fauchlevent from his fallen cart. This is what triggered Javert's suspicions about Madeleine's identity. And without it, old Fauchelevent's reunion with "Mayor Madeleine" at the convent makes no sense because readers hadn't seen the 2 men meet before! Gone: Fantine selling her teeth and becoming a prostitute. So, when one of the town's idlers insults her about her missing teeth, we're left to wonder how that happened... did she fall down some stairs? Did she get into fights with other idlers earlier? And why did she turn to booze (brandy)? Gone: Everything about Boulatruelle and Valjean's hidden cache of cash in the woods. Gone: Explanation of where Marius lived. We saw him leave his grandfather's house and move in with Courfeyrac. But the book's edit doesn't mention that he found Gorbeau House on one of his walks and rented a room there. And the edit also removed the part where he paid the Jondrette's rent to save them from eviction. Several chapters later it says "Marius "still lived" in the Gorbeau tenement [with] those Jondrettes whose rent he once paid." (???) Gone: M. Mabeuf's arc. All we see in this edit is that Mabeuf told Marius about his father, and stayed friends with Marius for several years. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (Yes) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (No) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (No)  ❌ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✅ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ❌ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ❌ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✅ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None.

Les Miserables. 284 pages, (editor unknown). 1959?, pub. Murray's Abbey Classics (UK). Word count: Approx 140,000. Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour) VHRQ: present The garish cover art and the page count (less than 300 pgs) of the "Murray's Abbey Classics" series looks like it was deceptively marketed to children and youths. This book begins with 3 pages of the Bishop of Digne, but it doesn't even mention any of his actual good works, like giving up his bishop's palace to the hospital. There's just nothing going on. This book has over 6 pages of the grisettes and the Love 'em Leave 'em boys, and wastes a lot of verbiage on fluff... the description of Fantine's beauty with all the references to classical mythology... stuff that would sail over the heads of the book's intended audience: "Her thick blonde tresses, inclined to wave, and easily escaping from their confinement, obliging her to fasten them continually, seemed designed for the flight of Galatea under the willows." (⮜OMG you've got to be kidding!) Once Marius starts reading up on Napoleon, there's mentions about "[Napoleon] took lessons from Talma" and "the poisoner of Jaffa" and "Geront's gaiety" and "Werther's melancholy" but there's no context or info and THIS IS A BOOK AIMED AT YOUTHS. How are adolescents supposed to know what any of that means? This comes off as irritating and pretentious and SERIOUSLY a mismatch for a 1960's-era pre-teen reader. Marius' and Valjean's involvement in the revolt is good. And it includes the bitter ending of the revolt with the execution of Enjolras and Grantaire.   Due to the pages packed with text, it has a larger word-count than other 300 page-ish adaptations. It removes (as expected) the battles of Waterloo, convent history, argot and a large chunk of the dreaded sewers. And I admit, it hits far more Plot Points than the more widely-distributed James K. Robinson version.  Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (Yes) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes)  The Verdict: This book, claiming to be "cleverly edited" is, at its core, the Wilbour translation, including the agonizingly long sentences and vocabulary. Example of words that youthful readers are expected to know: anchorite, physiognomy, rectitude, beldame, enjoining, "faltered out some supplicant words", behindhand, bedizened, paroxysm (⮜you get the picture). This happens when an adult book, written in antiquated English, is shortened only by removing (a lot of) text but leaving the original style and wording intact for the remainder. This book was published circa 1959-1960 (not 1862), and should have been rewritten in a modern style. It has untranslated French words. It has historical, literary and mythological references that are never footnoted nor explained. It's pretty much unreadable for children. And not worth hunting down at antiquarian booksellers. Another title in this series, Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas is even worse.  ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✅ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ✅ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ❌ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None.

Les Miserables. 308 pages, abridged by James K. Robinson. 1961?, pub. Fawcett, Ballantine Books, Dover Publications. Word count: Approx 109,000. Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour) VHRQ: present Book I: Fantine has a lot about Jean Valjean and very little about Fantine. Pg 7: She arrives in M-sur-M and gets a job and she's earning a living. Jump to Valjean as Mayor Madeleine, Champy Affair and by pg 68, Fantine is sick- why? They talk about the Mayor getting her child- why? Huge chunks are obviously missing. Valjean rescuing Cosette is hugely rushed. All of that is two sentences. No water bucket, no child abuse, no doll, no paying off the Thenns. It reads like this: "That done, he had gone to Montfermeil. On the evening of the same day that Jean Valjean had rescued Cosette [...] he entered Paris again." There's no story here- no details at all!😡 Later, we get a lot of Marius' cousin Theodule stuff (zzzzz). Because he's way more important than Fantine and Cosette (/s). Marius lives poorly in a tenement and practically starves. Yet he pulls out a pistol (p. 152) when his neighbors, the Jondrettes are expecting a visit from their benefactor. Where did the pistol come from? Later, Marius saves LeBlanc (Valjean) by tossing a note that Eponine wrote about "The cops are here" but when was that? We never saw her writing the note! Marius and Cosette meet, but Valjean is displeased and receives a note that tells him to "move out", so he plans on going to England with Cosette. Marius, despondent over not seeing Cosette anymore, gets a message from Eponine to meet his friends at the barricades. What friends? What barricade? How did this get plunked in? Enjolras who? Gavroche who? What are they fighting for and why is Marius joining them? As the book reaches the end, pages and pages (22 of them) are devoted to Marius & Cosette's marriage and their estrangement with Valjean. It's pretty wordy. By the end, Valjean reminisces with Cosette about the water bucket in the woods which is a continuity error, because all of that was edited out earlier in the book. What's he talking about? Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (No) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (No)  (Cringes) In a way, this is the worst of all worlds. I'm feeling sorry for kids who were assigned this book at school. 1) The text removes/censors all of the parts regarding Fantine and Cosette's suffering so we don't understand how/why Valjean is a big hero 2) The last few chapters have bad punctuation. Sentences begin with "he" in lower case. 3) It's been so heavily edited that plot points that are crucial to the narrative are missing, yet there's too many pages of fairly trivial stuff left intact.4) It says it's based on the Wilbour translation and is just as difficult to read, even as an abridged work 5) The book doesn't claim a copyright and attempts to establish itself as THE "standard abridgement of Wilbour's translation" (scoffs). The Verdict: Not Recommended. If you're a Les Miz noob, you will get lost. You'd be asking: Who's that? What happened? How did they get there? What is that? Should I care? And there's no reason to need a freakin' dictionary just to read a shortened (but not improved) version of the book. ❌ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ❌ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ❌ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ❌ 5-Cosette and the doll ❌ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ❌ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None, but the editing and continuity is poor.

Les Miserables. 550 pages (520 pages for the story), Abridged and Edited by Paul Benichou. 1964, pub. Washington Square Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.  Reprinted: 2005 Washington Square Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, 630 pages. Incorrectly credited as: "edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson"  Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour) VHRQ: present Another Wilbour-lite edition that's popular in schools. In addition to having a well-edited version of the story (albeit less comprehensive than Book League of America/Borders), it has some extremely useful supplementary material. It has the usual "Life and Work of Victor Hugo", "Historical and Literary Context of Les Miserables", "Chronology of Victor Hugo's Life and Work". But the true gem is the "Notes" section in the back with a glossary of words that might not be familiar to modern readers, historical/cultural tidbits mentioned in the book, and translations of French phrases and songs. Very, very helpful. The version of the book that's currently in-print says on the cover, "Complete and Unabridged" (<not true!) and "Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson" but she's not the one who trimmed down Charles Wilbour's original for this publication. The credit for the real work belongs to Paul Benichou. Originally done in 1964, and over the years the various re-issues, all under Simon & Schuster, had unfortunately dropped his name from the credits. Since there is a bit of an issue in locating an abridged, modern-language version, and the best of the Wilbour-lites is out of print, this one will do. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (No) ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ❌ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ❌ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✂ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score:

Les Miserables- A Classic Story of the Triumph of Grace and Redemption. 308 pages (287 pages for the story), adapted by Jim Reimann. 2001, pub. Word Publishing. Word count: Approx 124,000. Removes the place-name censorship. Town names spelled out in-full Language style is Modern VHRQ: Deleted Very understandable, and well edited. It has a lot of the "preachies"- the text emphasizes God, Heaven, prayer, saintly & devoted people like minor character Marguerite, God uses difficulty to transform people into saints, etc. This stuff is from Hugo's text so it's not made-up. It's just that there's such a heavy emphasis on it for a book that's only 1/5 the size of the original. There's a very devout reverence for God here, but not necessarily in a Catholic context, as the austerities of the convent ARE written in a way so that the reader doesn't see such regimented life in a positive way. Turns out that the implied criticisms of convent life are pretty mild here. An unabridged book shows Victor Hugo really unloading on convents and monastic life with both barrels. Getting back to the story: it doesn't explain the whole pistol thing as LeBlanc(Valjean) is being held and threatened by Thenn and goons. It says that Marius already owns two pistols (which were sitting in his drawer) yet he was so broke he had to skip meals? He'd finger the pistol, as if he was going to shoot someone directly and not use it to signal Javert and the police? Javert was hanging around nearby simply because he was suspicious of the seedy guys and carriages coming and going? What a coincidence! The fate of the ABC boys is not stated. The last we'd heard was that Enjolras and Marius were the last 2 leaders standing, and Marius gets hit by a bullet, rescued by Valjean and takes a trip to the sewers (mercifully short and to-the-point). We never hear what becomes of the rebellion. I generally think this is superior to James K. Robinson's equally-short version. This one explains exactly what happened to Fantine, details of her fall, and 11 pages devoted to Valjean rescuing Cosette from the Thenns. It also explains Marius' slow turn to the Friends of the ABC, who they are and what they're trying to do. Has far better continuity and it is a complete story, as long as you're not expecting to see the resolutions of various minor characters. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (No) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (No)  The Verdict: People, households and religious schools who prefer a Les Miz that's God-focused may like this. Covers the main plot and the story quickly, and very well, with sizable mentions of God. ❌ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ❌ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 2-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 3-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ❌ 4-Cosette and the doll ❌ 5-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 6-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ❌ 7-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 8-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 9-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 10-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 11-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 12-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 13-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: Very minor.

Les Miserables. 388 pages (343 pages for the story), adapted by Mary Ansaldo. 1993, pub. Globe Book Company. Word count: Approx 104,000. Removes the place-name censorship. Town names spelled out in-full Language style is Modern VHRQ: Present, but far less of it. The cover art looks like a kid's book. It has a good, short bio of Victor Hugo and contains a useful Character List. Has some helpful pages of French History, but says little about the 1832 revolt which was prominent in the novel. From a writing standpoint, it begins with fairly simple sentences, and the tone seems to be "story time for the kiddos". Example: "Looking up, he saw the head of an enormous bulldog at the opening of the hut. It was a kennel!" Interestingly enough, starting around page 48, the writing gets increasingly better, more polished and sophisticated. There is ONE glaring typo that's grounds to stop the presses, revise it and destroy the misprinted books: It says that Cosette (not Fantine) was driven to desperation and became a woman of the street.😡 (⮜Ouch! Nooooo!) What an embarrassment! Once Valjean and Cosette escape Javert's clutches and find themselves in a convent, it shows the convent in a mostly positive light- providing much-needed refuge for Valjean and Cosette for several years, allowing the girl to grow up in peace. Strangely, it does have a partial "Convent Coffin Caper" but fails to mention the purpose: so Valjean can exit the convent via coffin, be buried, get dug up so he can re-enter the convent via the front door. The Friends of the ABC are a large bunch (9) and actually named, with their personality characteristics. It also has a good bio of Monsieur Mabeuf and the Thug Gang o' Four. It explains Marius' suspicions about the upcoming entrapment and strong-arm robbery and how he got pistols and why Javert was right on-hand to arrest Thenn and the Thugs. The details about the Student Revolt and the barricades is excellent- probably the best of the 300-ish page adaptations (⮜nods approvingly). There are some story-oriented parts that had been deleted from this book: Petit-Gervais, Madame Thenn's death in prison, Thenn becomes a slave-trader in America (⮜possible improvement by omission).   Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes)  The Verdict: Wow! This book had inauspicious start, sounding like a children's book. But the more I read, it got better and better. I'm impressed at how well this covers the Rue St. Denis barricades and battles. The chapter names are taken from original, but might contain text from 3-4 related chapters. It has far less religious emphasis than Jim Reimann's book. The emphasis is on characters and telling the story, and can be read from start to end without slow/dead spots, skipping chapters or getting lost/bored. I think this is perfect for older kids and Young Adults. ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✅ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ❌ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✂ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✂ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✂ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None.

Les Miserables (Abridged), 2003, edited by Laurence M. Porter, 896 pages (784 pages for the story), pub: Barnes and Noble Classics. Word count: Approx 420,000 Keeps the place-name censorship Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour, with only small language updates) VHRQ: present Known as "The Boots". When you look at the cover, you'll know why. It has an excellent set of notes about Victor Hugo's life, and the various themes in the book and footnotes are also great. The translation is credited to Wilbour (of course!!!) yet it has signs of some slight modernization. Such as: Jean Valjean's initial description, translated by Wilbour as "His shaggy breast..." but updated here as "His hairy chest...". So, how is the abridgement accomplished? Answer: with either the removal of complete books, chapters, sometimes with a small place-holder paragraph summary, or the removal of several paragraphs within chapters. IMHO, 784 pages is a lot, so in theory, this abridgement should have everything important as far as story and character arcs, but... There's a lot of nearly-blank pages in this book, upping the page count by almost 100 pages! Waterloo: Summary paragraph replaces 17 chapters. The only complete chapter is "The Battlefield at Night (Thenn saves Pontmercy)" "NUMBER 24601 BECOMES NUMBER 9430"- I think this was edited too heavily. The negative impact that arresting M. Madeleine had on the town M-sur-M deserved to be complete and not a summary paragraph. The Austerities of the Convent: ALL of Books 6 & 7 were removed. Not a trace of 'em! The Urchins: 8 chapters deleted. Keeps just 4 chapters of generic urchin descriptions, and then jumps to introducing Gavroche. The Grand Bourgeois: Book 2 is deleted. This might not be a good idea... it completely removed the introduction of M. Gillenormand and went straight to Pontmercy the ex-war hero/now gardener. Louis-Philippe: Chapter removed, but surrounded by too much of Hugo's grumbling about the 1830 Revolution. The Field of the Lark: Deleted. But such a bad idea because it explains why Marius left Gorbeau house and moved in with Courfeyrac again. Jean Valjean- National Guard and Minor things about life at Rue Plumet: 3 entire chapters deleted. The Chain Gang: Deleted. I personally would have wanted it left in, because it hammers home how far Jean Valjean had come, and also shows Cosette that such horrible things exist. The Heart Under the Stone: Most of Marius' awful love letter to Cosette removed. Thank you! Argot: All of Book 7 is deleted. June 5, 1832: All of Book 10 is deleted. The stirrings of the revolt, LaMarque's funeral and the first shots fired? Not even a summary paragraph? Book 11: 5 chapters removed, so we don't see Gavroche going to war, or even old Mabeuf joining in the revolt. The Flag, part 2 and Gavroche's musket: Deleted, so we never see old Mabeuf's last stand, or Gavroche's brush with death. Couldn't there have been 2 paragraphs? The Vulture becomes Prey: Deleted. What? This is THE CHAPTER where Enjolras insisted that Javert should be executed. Valjean requests the honor. Even children's books have this! The Leviathan’s Bowels: All of Book 2 of the Sewers is deleted. This is all sewer history and doesn't involve characters, so being gone is fine. Valjean's Epitaph: Missing. Damn! The chapters loaded with argot are frustrating. Half the conversations in shitty argot. To understand what the hell those criminals are saying, you'd have to keep flipping to the back of the book for the English translation. All of a sudden, that Norman Denny translation (Penguin books) keeps looking better and better. The Verdict: The all-or-nothing weed-whacker approach to abridging is inferior to the careful pruning approach that I've seen in better Wilbour-based abridgements, such as Book League of America/Borders Classics where the editing doesn't draw so much attention to itself. But maybe the introduction and notes by Laurence Porter might make this B&N edition worthwhile. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (Yes) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes)  ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✅ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ✅ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✅ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None.

Les Miserables Abridged. Pages: n/a, abridged by Matt Larsen, 2012. self-published (online). Word count: Approx 254,000. Removes the place-name censorship. Town names spelled out in-full Language style is old-fashioned (Wilbour) VHRQ: present Superfan Matt Larsen had created not one, but FOUR different abridged editions of Les Miz, to cover different audiences. This full review is specifically about the version available for free online, on his blogspot website. According to Larsen, this is about half the length of the original, with a word count of 254,000. And it's fully Wilbour, without Larsen's language updates for the younger set. Because of this, I am not entirely convinced that yet another edited, verbatim Wilbour is entirely necessary. It only exists on blogspot, and does not have a physical or Kindle version, but it's free, so no argument here! Waterloo, the Austerities of the Convent, the character intros for 7 of the 9 of the ABC boys (only Enjolras and Combeferre rate), intros for M. Mabeuf and Patron Minette are all gone. And one very odd omission: The contents of Marius' letter to Cosette, placed under a stone in her garden. We see Cosette's reaction, but we never see what the letter says (even if Marius is a terrible love-letter writer!) Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes)   The Verdict: I really wish that Larsen had modernized the language for all of his abridged versions. His Children's Edition shows his talent and affinity for translating Wilbour into contemporary English. But, as we step through his increasingly longer edits for steadily older readers, we see less and less of Larsen and more and more of Wilbour. IMHO, it's not as if Wilbour's translation and wording was holy writ, so it's not offensive in any way to tinker with the word order and the wording to make it accessible to today's first time readers.    ✅ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ✅ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ✅ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ✅ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ✅ 5-Cosette and the doll ✅ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ✅ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ✅ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ✅ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ✅ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ✅ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ✅ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ✅ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ✅ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: None.

Les Miserables. nnn pages, adapted by xxxxxxx. 1993xx, pub. xxxxxxx Removes the place-name censorship. Town names spelled out in-full Language style is Modern VHRQ: Deleted Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Nice, but Non-Essential Plot Elements Included? Montparnasse's mugging money pickpocketed by Gavroche? (Yes/No) Gavroche saves his li'l bros? (Yes/No) Thenn & Thugs Prison Escape? (Yes/No) Eponine stops home-invasion robbery at Rue Plumet? (Yes/No)  ❌ 1-The Bishop of Digne is a Great Guy ❌ 2-Love 'em Leave 'em Boys entertain, then abandon their girlfriends ❌ 3-Fantine sells her teeth and becomes a prostitute ❌ 4-The ship Orion and Valjean's faked death ❌ 5-Cosette and the doll ✂ 6-Thenn chases after Valjean, wanting Cosette back. Valjean blows him off with Fantine's claim letter. ❌ 7-Javert disguises as a beggar/Gorbeau House ❌ 8-Valjean's "Convent Coffin Caper" ❌ 9-Waterloo: Thenn saves Pontmercy ✅ 10-Valjean & Cosette leave convent and move to Rue Plumet in Paris ❌ 11-Eponine/Cosette/Marius Love Triangle ❌ 12-Thenn and thug buddies ambush Valjean in his tenement, and attempt to rob and extort him. ❌ 13-Eponine dies saving Marius ✅ 14-Thenn unlocks the sewers for Valjean for a bribe ❌ 15-Thenn's greed accidentally ends the estrangement between Marius, Cosette and Valjean. They reconcile as Valjean is dying. ❌ 16-Thenn's fate Adaptation Deviation Score: