This is ridiculous. If some readers prefer a shortened version they need to read such aids as the Monarch Notes. To cut an author's words is the worst thing a publisher can do, especially with regard to the classics. I am apalled. I suppose Dostoevsky will be next.

joanne byrd, Grapevine,

If people are not willing to take the effort to read the original classics, then they should be able to read shortened versions. I think they're making a bad choice (reading Anna Karenina has completely changed the way I look at the world), but that's their choice. But saying that they're getting the full novel, just shorter, or suggesting that 40% of the world's greatest works of literature are "padding", is just wrong. Any shorter version will be watered down; anyone who says otherwise is just trying to make money.
Take Anna Karenina, for example. The novel has many plots, and even assuming Anna's is the main plotline is wrong. Tolstoy's aim was to show a large number of families, so as to compare their respective fates. Anna's takes up the most space because it's among the most important, but by cutting out the other ones for it you lose the whole concept of the novel, and are left with nothing but a simple tragic love story.

Isaac Brooks, Haifa, Israel

When someone provides an 'abridged' version, you are getting just that--a version. With a complex multi-plot and thematically rich and nuanced novel such as Middlemarch, that version will necessarily be partial. Who or what gets cut? The Fred and Mary and Farebrother plot? The Bulstrode backstory? Will the wonderful passage about the pier-glass make the cut? Readers should not be satisfied with letting someone else make these decisions for them. As the whaling examples discussed above reveal, one person's tedium is another's delight. I wholly agree, too, with those who have pointed out that plot and character is not all that these books are made of. In the case of Middlemarch, to stick with one example, the novel itself is beautiful structured both as a whole and in parts to help us realize, as readers, the novel's message of sympathy. Form matters as much as content--often one mark of a classic is the effective management of literary craft in pursuit of ideas.

R. Maitzen, Halifax, Nova Scotia

On the whale chapters in Moby-Dick: if you like nature documentaries, there's no reason why you oughtn't like those chapters.

On Anna Karenina: not as scary as people think it is. It's a very domestic story; it's not like Crime & Punishment which is half the length and ten times as hard to read and understand.

To Steve Blackey: Zadie Smith didn't write Howards End.

Kay, New York, NY

The issue is whether the significant thing about these classics is the story or the writing. The writing is the only thing that separates these works from something else on which they were based or something that is based on them. The writing is what made the authors famous. Cutting them will remove the attention to detail that made the works great. The result will not be abridged classics; these will just be verbose Cliff's Notes.

Kim Z, Washington, DC

First, I'm shocked at the tenor of the posts; why so harsh and judgmental? Franky, Moby Dick and War & Peace could both use some serious editing, as I've read both and found Moby Dick, in particular, to be excruciating.

Second, living authors routinely edit, update, or abridge their work in later editions. Might it be that authors like Dickens, Tolstoy, or Melville might be tempted to do the same were they alive? Nobody sets out to write a novel that has a shelf-life, and let's face it, if no one's reading...

If one really loves literature and wish to see it thrive, then it would seem to me one would be overjoyed to see people reading the classics--even if it's an abridged version. I'd much rather see someone read an abridged version of Moby Dick, than watch a few weeks of Survivor.

Dar, Macomb, IL

Moby-Dick has huge portions dedicated to the anatomy of whales. This might seem like filler, but it most certainly is not; it's detailed parody of the pseudo-sciences that had attempted to turn racism/slavery into a legitimate discourse. These sections, to be sure, will be considered "filler," and will be excised accordingly. I'm sure Melville would be proud that people at least enjoy a good fishing tale and consider that element of his novel worth their time.... Anyway, erudition is always superfluous in novels, right...?

Alex, Wisconsin, USA,

I am glad that my students don't all have this attitude. A couple of semesters ago, I assigned Wilkie Collins "The Woman in White," a very long Victorian novel. I was sure they would hate the novel, but I loved it and so I assigned it. To my surprise, they loved it too. These were college freshmen, folks, in their first semester. I was so happy to have had this class. They wrote some great papers, too, on the idea of a canon of literature and whether or not it was important. Every one of them said it was very important. I was so impressed that they worked with and closely read the kind of book y'all are talking about abridging.

Vickie, Tulsa, OK

This is like when people make movies out of books--it's not always bad, but it never lives up to the original. I would never claim that I'd read a book just because I've seen the movie, or if I'd read the sparknotes, so an abridged version of anything strikes me as a big waste of time and money.

Julianna, Long Beach, CA

Like Harry Potter, enticing thousands of children to actually read a book, these condensed books may well encourage many other people to 'try a classic'. If they like the experience, then chancces are they'll want more and maybe even read the original ?

chris, Lyttleton, New Zealand

Middlemarch is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read, and I can't imagine cutting it down by 30 or 40 pages, let alone 30-40%. It's all vital, but more importantly, it's all enjoyable. Ditto Jane Eyre.

I wish corporations would stop underestimating the intelligence and attention span of consumers. It's precisely because we live in such a hustle-bustle world that we need to remember to sit down and take pleasure in something that's rich, slow, and rewarding --- like a nice big book.

Troll Collins, Placentia, Newfoundland / Canada

To say that you have read Anna Karenina after having read the abridged version is untrue. There is no filler, because each book is a specific vision created by its author and its parts are indivisible from the whole. By all means read these abridged versions if you want to have a sense of what all those classics are about, but no one should delude themselves into thinking that what they are reading is the real thing.

Cameron, Austin, Texas

I fully agree to abridge the classics. In 21 century people have no time to read full text, when these novels wrote down people have ample time no other subtute, most writers of 19 century wrote long novels only because at that time they serilize these novels in magazine and at that time magazine paid to writers on pafge wise so author like Dostovsky who was alway hungry for money wrote more unnassary jargen.

Ramesh Raghuvanshi, Pune, Maharastra[India]

Are the classics "trophies?" Is our principal reason for reading them broadcasting that fact to others? And will we be willing to broadcast that our trophy is...not so big? Or will we claim "the big one," knowing, probably rightly, that we have read more than enough to stand behind the claim? Or is the reason for reading the classics really coming privately to grips with a big mind dealing with big issues and ideas and emotions in the way that the big mind envisioned and created? Had enough questions?

Reality Man, Leadville CO , USA

I look forward to abridged visual arts as well. They have entirely too much unnecessary content. And music, generally speaking, goes on much too long, particularly the classical variety.

Daniel Young, New York, NY

I think you'll find Zadie Smith knew exactly what she was doing when she rewrote Howards End. She acknowledges as much in her preface.

Steve Blackey, Melbourne, Australia

How very ironic that Ray Bradbury had it pegged right back in 1958 with "Fahrenheit 451", in which a non-reading, violent, and television and fun-park driven society claimed they're read all the classics in the form of supercondensed editions.

Since it seems people have lost the attention span to read the whole book, let me summarize: people get so caught up in their "live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse behind" lifestyle eschewing reading and thought that they forget about the unending war raging in the background until the nukes hit.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

Kat, Brooklyn, New York

Abridged versions of the classics already exist. They're called Reader's Digest Condensed Books here in the States, and I outgrew them by the time I was about seven years old.

As far as parts of some of the books being outdated, there's value in that...you can learn how things used to be done and how people used to live as opposed to current methods and customs. Nothing wrong with learning something, now, is there?

At any rate, I'm not sure I really want to buy books from a publisher who uses the phrase "these ones".

E. Frei, Fresno CA/USA

E. Frei, Fresno, CA

As a teacher of English who has witnessed, firsthand, the dumbing down of society via the trash we are now forced to teach the youth of today, I am not surprised in the least to see the depths publishers would stoop to make a profit. Perhaps Captain Beatty was right after all. I anxiously await the publishing of the definitive REAL C Edition Newspeak dictionary. It will certainly make my job easier. Sickening.

M Ragucci, Brooklyn, New York

"Lite" books for the fat free, skim decaf brain dead.

Kim O'Brien, Sydney, Australia

[re-submitted owing to web site error message]
Abridgers may do well to consider the dilemma that translators face - the conflict between translating the words and grammar; and the desire to convey a strong sense of the "meaning" or essence of the work.

A successful translator or précis preparer anticipates the demands of the reader and throws away material unsuited to those purposes. Our best hope is that if it is done well, it may tempt the reader into examining the nuances, technical tricks and sometimes tedious filler material in the original works.

If Shakespeare can survive this process and prove so popular in disparate cultures 400 years after writing, then there is surely a strong case for making high literary art as broadly accessible as possible.

After all, abbreviation is better than extinction.

Andrew J. Winks, Cape Town, South Africa

This reminds me of what Woody Allen said when he mastered speed reading and polished off "War and Peace" in fifteen minutres.
"It's about Russia."

David , Chicago, IL

Condensed editions are a great idea. Most of us can do without Melville's detailed description of the intricacies of whaling in Moby Dick, and it's still out there for those who want it. When these books were written they were the "soaps" of their day - a chapter or two every evening, with no competition from the box. We still have sagas like Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" coming out but they're rare. A well-edited shorter version will open doors for people. And, it's still better than just spending a couple of hours watching the movie!

Ken Emmond, Mexico City, Mexico

Ulysses: 16 June 1904. Dublin, Ireland. Yes. The end.

Neil, Baja California, Mexico

How about we just reduce sporting events to the highlight reels. Who needs to spend three hours at a baseball or football game, when we only need to see fifteen minutes of the highlights. How about we cut all operas and symphonies to basic melodies only.
I could go on and on, but I hope you get the idea of this silly and at the same time scary thought process.
A lover of Western culture.

Stuart H. Brager, Pikesville, Maryland

Orion's much too tentative. Let's have a one-volume edition of: All the World's Classics — According to Hoyle. He really has their measure.

Nelles Hamilton, Vancouver, Canada

It's so sad that it's funny. Shakespeare's Mercutio understood the connection between comedy and tragedy -- they're inherently linked, of course. In the end, I still don't think, "At least they're reading!" I think, "Oh. How sad." Another example of the inexorable dumbing down of the culture, the media, the ability to think critically, etc. Very _1984_.

I just hope that those of us who care about education keep passing on the love of learning and literature to the next generation by giving kids the real thing and trusting _them_ to skim through what _they_ consider to be the boring bits. Otherwise, it's like a "Best of" album: very subjective, often off.

That said, this is pretty much the equivalent to slashing the edges off a Picasso canvas to eliminate 'extraneous' images...

Daphne, Boise, U.S.

There's a really good adventure story in Moby Dick, if you only read every other chapter. The ones in between -- the interminable exposition of technical matters about whales and whaling -- could be placed in an appendix. And, like any appendix, surgically removed without harm to the corpus.

DHN, Tucson, Arizona

Orion's much too tentative. Let's have a one-volume edition of: All the World's Classics — According to Hoyle. He really has their measure.

Nelles Hamilton, Vancouver, Canada

These books are in fact long and boring, and most people who've read them couldn't give you even a Cliff Notes summary of them. I read them when I was young and still had a) the stamina and b) the necessary respect for received opinion. I tried to re-read Middlemarch recently and just got tired of Eliot's failure to get to the point. I suppose I've never forgiven her for Felix Holt, either. Anyway, I strongly suspect novels are intended not as art, but merely a pastime for the literate. If people want to promote serious intellectual writing they should re-issue The Auction Sale by C. H. B. Kitchin.

John FitzGerald, Toronto, Canada

Why are people so afraid of reading long books? If you can't handle the length of Anna Karenina--which is written in language that is both beautiful and accessible--then don't read it! Or get someone else to tell you the story! Or practice your skimming skills, if you're still set on "reading" it! Or, let's be honest, sit right back down in front of the tv. But don't let someone else decide what to keep and what to cut.

"THE LAZY PERSON'S EDITION" better be written in large letters on the covers of these bowdlerized versions.

Vanessa Skye, Burlington, VT

Brilliant approach, perhaps a classical music label will take the hint and issue shortened versions of Wagner and other works, leaving out every other note or aria. One will be able rip right through the Ring Cycle and read War and Peace in a single sitting!

Al Silinis, Chicago, Illinois, USA

This is like squashed philosophers. A good idea but I still would like to read the entire works.

Shaun, Salem,

The art of skipping has always been an indispensable part of the art of reading. Why would anyone want to read the outdated theories of agriculture with which Tolstoy padded Anna Karenina? And of course you can't read Moby Dick without skipping over the nonsense about whaling. This publisher is just doing the skipping for us, thereby making the books accessible to more readers.

Daniel Stoffman, Toronto, Canada

If you want to read the abbreviated "Anna Karenina," great! If you want to read Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," great! Just don't confuse the two.

Gene Downs, Durham, NC, USA

Sounds like a reasonable compromise between editors who hate literature but have to print it, and readers who hate literature but feel they have to read it. The rest of us should ignore them, and continue to feed happily.

Ted Reynolds, Ann Arbor, Michigan

I don't like the idea. I think learning to read these books successfully is the difference from being a poor reader and a good one--a skill that takes years to develop.

However, having said that, I can't help remembering what Stephen Crane said about Tolstoy's "War and Peace": It was good but he could have done it in a third of the pages.

The point here is that there is a lot of junk in some of these books. And in Dickens's case it was market-driven because of serialization demands. In Tolstoy's case, it seems as if he just couldn't shut up. For me, "Anna Karenina" seems to be two different novels that never really become one.

Ron Johnson, Monterrey, Mexico

The number of essential books is rising all the time. Either they get shorter (and the reader is at the mercy of an editor who may or may not be up to the task) or we do a better job of fitting people to the books that they will want to read... and finish. Maybe the latter isn't so hard. Amazon.com already does it in one form.

I would rather leave the editing to the author and the reader. All that is needed is a marketing/criticism middleman function in which the varying suitability of different books for different people is explicitly recognized.

Jon Monroe, Blue Hill, USA

Shallow reading for shallow people.

Dee, Austin, Texas

The reason these books are so long and difficult is to limit the low, base, uncultured mass of men who read them. Orion is undermining this all important political principle. What's next? Aquinas for kids? Cliff's notes for Leo Strauss?

Good grief.

Will, Irving, TX

I suppose the history books are next. And what about all those dull philosophers? Life's too short, and there's too much to bother trying to find out, so go pop another beer and turn on football or watch American Idol—or is that American Idle?

C. Dow, Houston, TX, USA

It's a greta idea in that it makes the reading of the non-condensed version an elite activity again. Pity that people are willing to reinstate that kind of attitude, but that's the reality if being able to say you've read a book is more important to you than atually having read a book.

Well, ALL the pages in th book, anyway...

Dave Teeuwen, Mt. Albert, Ontario, Canada

As a prolific reader and English Literature major I have worked my way through many of the classics. After a lifetime's reading and reflection I am convinced that many are overrated, too long and badly written [ as in boring]. Like any other genre most of it is rubbish with a few outstanding gems. The challenge is finding the gems.Unfortunately compacting doesn't help with this process.

John Gowans, Durban, South Africa

I doubt if there is a "democracy" of works that can be abridged with success. Some can, I suppose, but others cannot. In any case, it's a dicey undertaking.

James, Jacksonville, Illinois U. S.

A few thoughts: (1) If people want abridged versions of these novels, then they should be available. It's not like the originals won't be out there for those who want them. (2) These aren't works of gods; you aren't desecrating a work by abridging it. (3) I don't consider abriding novels "dumbing down" so much as making them more palpable for people with lower patience and/or less time on their hands.

Robert Costic, Washington, DC

Humiliation is a game from David Lodge's wonderful campus novel, Changing Places.
These people need to give credit to the author and NEVER NEVER cut one of his books.

mark, SHREVEPORT,

Haven't 'abridged editions' been existence a long time?

In 1960, I over heard undergraduate students use the word 'non-tail'. It took me sometime to understand. That was a short form for 'non-detailed text' for the year long english language classes. These were abridged classics. If I remember right, it was David Copperfield.
At the time, I was a pre-university student in AP, India.

klp, Hollywood, FL, USA

I think "these ones" should be left alone, but at least the guy is coming out of the closet. Editors, puppets of their bean crunching puppeteers, write everything now anyway. In consequence, the only literature is that published and extant before these leeches fastened onto the art. I guess in our busy, busy, busy lives there just isn't time enough to be aware of much of anything - especially beyond the horizons of the crunched beans our beans have become.

Russ Thayer, Fredericksburg, USA/TX

How about a bible lite? Cut those interminable genealogies, for one. Collapse the synoptic gospels into one, for another. Haven't gone past the Genesis in the Old Testament and the Gospel according to Mattew in the New Testament. It is true, life is too short. And I want to be saved.

E. C. Hizon, Manila, Philippines

Brillian idea...at least with respect to Moby Dick. Fully 60% of that book is outdated, archaic encyclopedia of whaling! I struggled with that book for so long before grinding to a hault.

max kovler, toronto,

I see Orion has shortened Melville's masterpiece by eliminating the hyphen.

Perhaps Malcolm Edwards will want to extend the application to his own life. I'm sure he could develop ways of bringing on orgasm in half the time, cutting out all that silly thrusting. But maybe that's where he got the idea in the first place.

Frank Gado, White River Junction, Vermont, USA

Proving once again that those who cannot create, usually destroy.

James L. Weaver, APTOS, USA/CA

In the past, kids used to read Classics Illustrated.

RA, Manila,

What I'd like to know is who exactly is going to part with their hard-earned cash for these books. If you want to bluff, you buy cliff notes or watch an adaptation - it's far easier - and, if you fancy reading the books, you're not going to settle for a lesser version. For most of these books, it the language that is the real draw, not simply the narrative.

Far more interesting would be a publisher commissioning talented young authors to reimagine the classics. Zadie Smith's On Beauty unintentionally did this and was fabulous.

Why can't publishers stop flogging dead horses? Put your money into publishing tomorrow's classics instead!

AL, London,

Sounds very similar to so many 'artists' who 'shorten' or 'adapt' an existing play or book, but still call on the original name because that of course is well known, and they aren't.
Next step is probably to reduce it to sa simple script or scenario format. And all socialites can then claim to have read it...
Or how to turn great literature into ordinary junk food.

bill, Bristol, UK

Agree with the other publisher - it isn't the real thing, there is no point thinking that you have read the actual novel, you read the cliff notes! It's a fairly decent entrance into literature, but I don't think that people will then think that it is worth reading the real thing, and will be under the impression that they "know" the work. Not everything is supposed to be easy. Great literature is one of those things. Films are a different art-form. They condense in order to create their medium. Adaptation is different to abridgment.

Daisy, Durham,

Sort of like a Readers Digest for Classics. One positive aspect is that if you like the condensed version you are more likely to make the decision to read the original. Sadly, seeing the word 'classic' on a book is enough to make people yawn these days so these compact editions could be like a test drive for the curious but uninitiated.
Reading requires an investment of time and that is a rare commodity these days apart from the sad fact that a short attention span and instant gratification is now part of modern life and well fed, thank-you very much, by the modern culture of celebrity gossip magazines and video games.
We have lost sight of the deep satisfaction, wisdom and reflection that is derived from reading a piece of classic literature.
We either embrace a well thought out offering such as this or we are doomed to learn all our classics through Disney.

Maggie Day-Myron, Hamilton, Canada

Good idea. Surprised this hasn’t been done before; after all, the film of the book is an even more abridged version and few people complain.

Henry Percy, London, UK