On the off chance that I’ve managed to inspire someone to try to read my favorite 19th century novel, the question arises, assuming one does not read French: which translation?

There is a discussion of the various translations currently available at the WeLoveTranslations site.

But it basically comes down to an anonymous 1846 translation, which is what the good folks at Project Gutenberg have used as it has long since entered the public domain, a few abridged translations, and the 1996 Robin Buss work published by Penguin. The 1846 translation has been updated a number of times in a number of different ways. There is also a rather offbeat condensation that I’ll mention in a moment.

My choice was to buy the Buss version and I was quite happy with it.

Here is Robin Buss himself discussing the various translations:

Anyone who has read The Count of Monte Cristo only in this ‘classic version’ has never read Dumas’ novel. For a start, the translation is occasionally inaccurate and is written in a nineteenth-century English that now sounds far more antiquated than the French of the original does to a modern French reader: to mention one small point in this connection, Dumas uses a good deal of dialogue (he wrote by the line), and the constant inversions of ‘said he’ and ‘cried he’ are both irritating and antiquated. There are some real oddities, like the attempt to convey popular speech (which does not correspond to anything in Dumas), when the sailor in Chapter XXV says: ‘that’s one of them nabob gentlemen from Ingy [sic], no doubt …’ Even aside from that, most of the dialogues in this nineteenth-century translation, in which the characters utter sentences like: ‘I will join you ere long’, ‘I confess he asked me none’ and ‘When will all this cease?’, have the authentic creak of the Victorian stage boards and the gaslit melodrama.

It can be argued that this language accurately conveys an aspect of Dumas’ work, but not even his worst detractors would pretend that there is nothing more to it than that. Still less acceptable, however, than the language of this Victorian translation is the huge number of omissions and bowdlerizations of Dumas’ text. The latter include part of Franz’s opium dream at the end of Chapter XXXI, some of the dialogue between Villefort and Madame Danglars in Chapter LXVII, and several parts of Chapter XCVII, on Eugénie and Louise’s flight to Belgium. In some cases the changes are so slight as to be quite hard to detect. In the description of Eugénie at the opera (Chapter LIII) for example, Dumas remarks that, if one could reproach her with anything, it was that, both in her upbringing and her appearance, ‘she seemed rather to belong to another sex’. The English translator renders this: ‘As for her attainments, the only fault to be found with them was … that they were somewhat too erudite and masculine for so young a person’ (p. 542)! At the end of Chapter XCVII, the translation (p. 950) simply omits the few lines of dialogue where Dumas has Eugénie say that ‘le rapt est bel et bien consommê’ – where the word rapt (‘abduction’) has a rather too overtly sexual connotation. Similarly, earlier in the same chapter, where Eugénie jokes that anyone would think she was ‘abducting’ (enlève) Louise – another word used almost exclusively of a man with a woman – the translator prefers the more neutral phrase ‘carrying me off’ and omits altogether Louise’s remark that Eugénie is ‘a real Amazon’. Another anonymous translation (Dent, 1894) refers to ‘the escape’ rather than ‘the abduction’ – which makes nonsense of Louise’s reply that it is not a true abduction since it has been accomplished without violence.

The Robin Buss modern translation of the complete unabridged The Count of Monte Cristo.

Various abridged versions such as this from Dover Books of The Count of Monte Cristo.

A condensed account in the style of Sherlock Holmes: The Count of Monte Cristo as Retold by Sherlock Holmes This is a lively retelling of the story, chapter by chapter, as inspired directly by the Robin Buss translation, but in the voice of Sherlock Holmes telling the story to Dr. Watson, with occasional interjections from the doctor. Unconventional, yes, but from what I can see after a quick perusal, it hits all the important points of the plot. At three bucks for the ebook, it might be the best bet for those who are interested but haven’t the patience to delve into the Dumas original.

The original anonymous 1846 translation available from Project Gutenberg and several other free sites.

If you prefer the visual medium, then you might like the latest movie version, the three hour 2024 French film of The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s scheduled for blu-ray in March.

There are other versions including the classic 1934 movie, the 1975 TV movie with Richard Chamberlain, and others that may or may not be available, they keep going in and out of print. You can generally find used copies, of course. Both the 1934 and the 1975 are reasonably good adaptations, but I would not call them faithful, as how can one adapt a 1200 page novel into a two hour movie?

The recent TV mini series, also from France (actually it’s an English language production with English speaking actors but it was made on location in France), was broadcast in Europe in 2024, but as far as I can tell there are not as yet any plans for its streaming in the US of A nor do I see a blu-ray in sight. Sigh.

For the truly adventurous among you, there is the Château d’If itself, which is now a tourist attraction. You can visit the very dungeon where Edmond Dantès was locked up for fourteen years, and if you slip the tour guide a fiver (a Euro, of course) perhaps he’ll lock you up overnight without food or water so you can savor the true Château d’If experience.

Or perhaps you’d like to visit Monte Cristo island itself to see if there’s any treasure left over that Dantès left behind.

To the best of my knowledge, every location that Dumas mentioned in his novel is a real place, right down to the individual addresses.

 

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