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SeaStar
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| Posted: July 14 2010 at 8:21pm | IP Logged
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I have to admit I had never read the full version until this summer.... now reading it out loud with the kids.
What a hoot! All the many animals and plants they find- rice, elephants, kangaroos, potatoes- all on one tropical island! Even my dc are not fooled and keep saying, "hmm... that must be some island...."
Anyway, I found this
at Wikipedia, which was very interesting. I thought it was kind of neat that the father wrote the book as a nature study program for his sons. He would have fit right in here 
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Betsy
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Can I ask what version of the book you have? I was looking at Amazon to find a nice unabridged copy and got very mixed results from the reviews. Some of the review seems to question if the unabridged version was actually that, because the book was so different from what they remember as a kid or their favorite line was missing, etc.
Thanks for the help, I am looking forward to reading this with my boys this year.
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Erin
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Melinda
I just read your link, I had no idea there were sequels!!
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Karen T
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Betsy, i wonder if a lot of people who miss a line they remember are actually thinking of the Disney movie, which was a nice fun movie but differs a lot from the book, as usual.
Karen
p.s. Melinda, this book is used in MODG's high school Natural History course! It has always been one of my favorite books (and movie!) I always wanted to live in a treehouse after seeing the movie.
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Karen T
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SeaStar wrote:
What a hoot! All the many animals and plants they find- rice, elephants, kangaroos, potatoes- all on one tropical island! Even my dc are not fooled and keep saying, "hmm... that must be some island...."
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You should watch the series Lost (I'm just now watching season 1 from netflix - missed the entire Lost craze the last 5 yrs) - they have polar bears on this tropical island!
karen
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SeaStar
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I am reading the Illustrated Classics version, which I suspect is abridged, although I can't determine that for sure. But at over 200 pages (and lots of killing- see a lion, OK- kill it! Monkeys a nuisance? Poison them!  ) abridged is fine.
I know they had to kill to survive, but it is a recurrent theme (which has not stopped any of us from enjoying it). I just reserved the book on cd from the library, which is listed as unabridged, so we'll see how the two compare.
Erin- I did not know, either, that there are a few sequels! I will definitely look into these.
It all makes me want to go to Disney World and visit the treehouse there.
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JennGM
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Thanks for the tip, Melinda! That's neat that it was originally a nature study book.
Online version.
I am so picky about versions. Do you know how many versions of Black Beauty there is? I think this is the same for Swiss Family Robinson.
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Erin
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Betsy
I think I get what your reviewers mean. After this thread I was inspired to go and re-read SFR. The book I picked off my shelf is not a copy one I have read before. The first copy I ever read was to my brother when he was 9 (he is 22 now) and I borrowed it from the library. I remember being rather surprised by all the 'thees and thys' but he coped with it all well. Well the copy I'm reading now is missing the older language and really it is not the same  it has lost something. Yet it doesn't say abridged on the book.
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MaryM
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SeaStar wrote:
| It all makes me want to go to Disney World and visit the treehouse there. |
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Or go stay here - Treehouse Treesort 
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lapazfarm
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MaryM wrote:
SeaStar wrote:
| It all makes me want to go to Disney World and visit the treehouse there. |
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Or go stay here - Treehouse Treesort |
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That is so awesome!
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Betsy
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Erin wrote:
Betsy
I think I get what your reviewers mean. After this thread I was inspired to go and re-read SFR. The book I picked off my shelf is not a copy one I have read before. The first copy I ever read was to my brother when he was 9 (he is 22 now) and I borrowed it from the library. I remember being rather surprised by all the 'thees and thys' but he coped with it all well. Well the copy I'm reading now is missing the older language and really it is not the same it has lost something. Yet it doesn't say abridged on the book. |
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That is interesting. I wonder how one would go about trying to figure out which older, unabridged copy is the "original" one ?
Jenn, if there are a bunch of different version's of a book does that imply there is different text in each book? In the case of Black Beauty or SFR is it a translation issue or that each published abridges it differently or ???? I always thought that no matter what publisher, if the book was unabridged it would be the same. But maybe that isn't always the case?
Betsy
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SeaStar
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It sounds like there are many, many versions and translations floating around. This is from Wikipedia:
Over the years there have been many versions of the story with episodes added, changed, or deleted. Perhaps the most well known English version is by William H. G. Kingston first published in 1879.[1] It is based on Isabelle de Montolieu's 1824 French adaptation and continuation Le Robinson suisse, ou, Journal d'un père de famille, naufragé avec ses enfans in which were added further adventures of Fritz, Franz, Ernest, and Jack.[1] Other English editions which claim to include the whole of the Wyss-Montolieu narrative are by W. H. Davenport Adams (1869-10) and Mrs H. B. Paull (1879). As Carpenter and Prichard write in The Oxford Companon to Children's Literature (Oxford, 1995), "with all the expansions and contractions over the past two centuries (this includes a long history of abridgments, condensations, Christianizing, and Disney products), Wyss's original narrative has long since been obscured."[1] The closest English translation to the original is William Godwin's 1816 translation, reprinted by Penguin Classics.[2]
Has anyone read any of the sequels? I am going to try to find "The Second Fatherland" by Jules Verne....
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Betsy
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I am sorry to bore you all with my dilemma of what version of this book to get. Abridged books just frustrate me, and, until this discussion, I was positively perplexed by the comments on Amazon in regards to the unabridged version. Thanks Erin and Melinda for helping me make sense of this issue.
I am still a bit unsure of which version I will settle on....truly I am sure that I can't go wrong! Nevertheless, I found this review at Amazon and it seems to sum up my confusion and resolve it quite nicely.
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The Swiss Family Robinson was initially written in German by Swiss author Johann Wyss in 1812, and then soon after an accurate English translation was completed by William Godwin in 1816. The Godwin translation remained the standard in English for a generation or two, but by the mid-19th century the number and variety of English translations began to multiply - there were no enforceable copyright laws and translators freely added episodes, changed names (and even genders) of some of the characters and cut portions of the text to conform to changing views on education and aesthetic tastes. There are probably over a dozen such variations and most who read the novel today are not reading the original (the 2007 Penguin Classics edition, edited by John Seelye, is the 1816 Godwin translation, which is the closest to the original). I have now read two: William Kingston's 1879 adaptation (one of the more common adaptations) and Godwin, and I believe the original translation of Wyss by Godwin is better. It's not abridged like most later versions so certain scenes just make more sense - for example some of the characters are more dynamic, like Ernest shows himself to be a capable bloodthirsty killer like his brothers (a scene cut from later editions to maintain his "bookish" nature) - and the theories on education are classic Rousseauian (he is mentioned twice in the narrative).
This isn't your childhood Swiss family. Godwin's 1816 translation has rarely been in print until recently - most versions floating around are some variation of Isabelle de Montolieu's 1824 French adaptation (William H. G. Kingston's 1879 English translation of Montolieu's French adaption is probably the most common). In Montolieu/Kingston's version, the original ~400 page that Wyss wrote has been abridged to about 150 pages, with an additional 150 pages or so of new material added to the end (with an entirely different ending, new characters, etc). So if you've read Swiss family as a child, and are looking for an "unabridged" version, you may find Godwin's 1816 translation missing a lot of material - simply because Wyss never wrote it in the first place.
What version to read? I would say Montolieu/Kingston's version (and others) are more "kid friendly" mainly because the Godwin translation is from 1816 and as such uses some language that is dated and has passages that would probably be boring or not make sense without historical context. So in a way there is no "right" version since most readers for the past 150 years have not been reading the "original" anyway. I would probably recommend the Montolieu/Kingston version for juvenile readers and the Godwin version for adults - or even better, read all of Godwin plus the second half of Montolieu/Kingston which is all new material, the first half just being an abridged version of Godwin.
In the end I enjoyed the novel for what it is - a great adventure and inspiring family story. Many classic stories are challenging and interesting but not always "fun" - this one is just a great story and fun to read. It's even more fun knowing there are is a whole world of alternative versions available, with more adventures and different endings, but I'm glad to have read the original as it was written by Wyss (and his sons).
~~~~~~~~~~
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lapazfarm
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Well. That is just fascinating!
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SeaStar
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it is- I never had any idea there were so many versions.
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JennGM
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Betsy,
No apologies necessary! I LOVE talking about versions of books.
That is so interesting on the book and the translations, thanks for posting it! It makes me have follow-up questions
1) I'm thinking the sequels are the added material not by the original author. Yes or no?
2)
Quote:
| I would probably recommend the Montolieu/Kingston version for juvenile readers and the Godwin version for adults - or even better, read all of Godwin plus the second half of Montolieu/Kingston which is all new material, the first half just being an abridged version of Godwin. |
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So, Betsy, have you found the books to these versions? Share the links, please?
and 3) are there audio versions of these versions?
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Betsy
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Here is my limited attempt to paste together some "good" versions of Swiss Family Robinson. What I have done (but I am not going to post all here) is compile a bunch of reviews from Amazon, etc. and try to find good version based on people comments. In all of this compiling, this is the sediment that rings most true from Project Gutenberg, "No unabridged edition of <Swiss Family Robinson> exists in English.
Indeed, the book has been rewritten so many times, by so many
editors, that it can legitimately be said that that no complete
edition of the book exists in <any> language."
With that being said, if you see any SFR version's that say they are unabridged, it is a falsehood. There truly are no unabridged versions!!
Therefore, it was recommended to say away from this version.
One reviewer recommend ISBN 0440415942 as a "rich version".
Another reviewer stated that, 2007 Penguin Classics edition, edited by John Seelye, is the 1816 Godwin translation, which is the closest to the original” which is this version (0143104993)
I also found quite a few older versions on Project Gutenberg and Google Reader. After quickly looking through these version it looks like there is a copy that was Kingston's original translation from 1879. Here is a link to that copy.
Also, LibriVox seems to have an older Kingston version that is here.
This has been a great little adventure for me in trying to find a "good version" of Swiss Family Robinson. To me, SFR seems to be reminiscent of an old legend that has been passed down from generation to generation. However, with the way books get water downed today, and am nervous as to where this book might end up!!!!!
I hope this information helps....and PLEASE let me know if you read one of these version or have a particular favorite that you want me to add to this list (it is by NO MEANS exhaustive).
Betsy
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Thank you, Betsy! This is just fascinating.
Of course, it makes me think of all the other classics like Robinson Crusoe, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, etc.
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lapazfarm
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This is so fascinating I had to go to the local library to see what they had.
The only copy they had (tiny library) was a 1985 "Buccaneer Books" edition, with no other author listed but Wyss. After a brief reading, the text seems to be identical to the Project Gutenburg Kingston translation you linked above, so I am assuming that's what it is.
Neat discussion!
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Betsy
Amazing! now I found my Companion Library copy and it is a Kingston transl. Although it isn't the thee's and thou's it is still 'older world' language compared to the copy I'm currently reading (Charnwood Large Print) and much richer. The large print ed isn't the same. I also looked up my library catalogue, they have the older version which I remember and it is a Kingston edition and they have the newer one that you linked to above as the 'stay away version'. (Typical)
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Topic: Swiss Family Robinson revisited
