The Count of Monte Cristo: A Readalong!

I have wanted to read The Count of Monte Cristo for awhile now. In truth, I should say that I've wanted to reread it, because way back, decades ago, I did read this Alexandre Dumas classic, and I remember loving it. My memory is hazy about the details, but I think I must have been in high school, so we're talking 40 years ago. One thing I'm certain of is that I had an abridged version of the novel. I can remember almost nothing about the book; it is the positive impression that has stuck with me over all these years. 

I read one of Dumas' other famous novels, The Three Musketeers, in 2022 and blogged about it as I went (the readalong blog is here, and my review is here). I had a great time reading it. This time, I'll be reading The Count of Monte Cristo with a small group of other readers, discussing the book weekly as we go, and I'll be blogging my thoughts on this post every couple of days. I find that it makes me even more engaged in the book when I'm annotating as I go, picking out favourite quotes and noting down my impressions. 

The Count of Monte Cristo was written between 1844-46, and published serially, in 18 parts in the Journal Des Débats. It was then published in novel form. And did you know that Dumas had a co-writer for many of his works? His close collaborator was Auguste Maquet, who often came up with the plots of his novels, while Dumas wrote them. At the insistence of the publisher, Maquet's name was omitted, and this led to Maquet suing Dumas in 1851 for royalties. The court, however, ruled in favour of Dumas. 

A note on translations and editions. I'll be reading the full edition, and one as close to complete as I can. I have an anonymous translation, which I usually means it's a variant of an 1846 translation by Chapman and Hall. It's the Canturbury Classics World Cloud Classics edition from 2013. It has 118 chapters and is over 1000 pages in small font, which indicates that it is not an abridged version. Regardless, most editions have some bowdlerization (where racy parts were removed in the 19th century), but apparently it's not uniform and hard to tell. There's a 1996 translation by Robin Buss that's modernised but slightly more inclusive of the text. My edition has 118 chapters, and many have 117 as they do not include a chapter called "The Past" near the end, but that chapter is easily downloadable as a pdf with a simple google search, so when it comes time I'll note that in this blog. 

***

The reading plan is to read over eight weeks, with 14 chapters per week. I'll be reading Monday to Saturday with a day off on Sunday, so that is 2-3 chapters per day. 

***