I'm annoyed about this book. I've half wanted to read it for years, so when I read 'the day they came to arrest the book' it reminded me it existed, so I re-read Tom Sawyer and then bought a cheap copy off Abebooks.

Nowhere did it say 'abridged' (my version is the priory classics version, which I can't find on library thing). It doesn't on the cover, or in the copywrite notice, or anywhere.

So I read it, and was really surprised not to have spotted famous bits I was expecting in there (like 'no-one hurt, killed a n*gger') and then went and googled for a text on-line, and of course, it is abridged, from 43 chapters down to 23.

I didn't enjoy it. I found it all a bit too stupid and cringy - the confidence tricksters are unpleasant people to travel with, and the townsfolk they defraud are irritatingly stupid. The bit where Jim is in real danger and Tom and Huck spend forever playing at Free the Prisoner makes me want to bang their heads together. And Jim, though kind and generous, never really comes to life as a character.

Of course, it is hard to know how much of this was that I had a Really Badly Abridged edition. Any book that cuts out the entire famous 'I know I'm wicked trying to free Jim, but I'll go to hell' soliloquy and replaces it with the one sentence 'straightaway I knew I'd have to try to steal him free again' probably isn't the fairest rendition of the original authors intent.

But I can't quite bring myself to get a better version and read it again right now, because I didn't enjoy it very much... ( )