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The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Kindle Edition
William Goldman’s beloved story of Buttercup, Westley, and their fellow adventurers.
A tale of true love and high adventure, pirates, princesses, giants, miracles, fencing, and a frightening assortment of wild beasts—The Princess Bride is a modern storytelling classic.
As Florin and Guilder teeter on the verge of war, the reluctant Princess Buttercup is devastated by the loss of her true love, kidnapped by a mercenary and his henchmen, rescued by a pirate, forced to marry Prince Humperdinck, and recused once again by the very crew who absconded with her in the first place. In the course of this dazzling adventure, she'll meet Vizzini—the criminal philosopher who'll do anything for a bag of gold; Fezzik—the gentle giant; Inigo—the Spaniard whose steel thirsts for revenge; and Count Rugen—the evil mastermind behind it all. Foiling all their plans and jumping into their stories is Westley, Princess Buttercup's one true love and a very good friend of a very dangerous pirate.
The Princess Bride was unforgettably depicted in the 1987 now cult classic film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Fred Savage, Robin Wright, Billy Crystal, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Cary Elwes, and others.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateOctober 8, 2007
- Reading age14 years and up
- File size2246 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Goldman frames the fairy tale with an "autobiographical" story: his father, who came from Florin, abridged the book as he read it to his son. Now, Goldman is publishing an abridged version, interspersed with comments on the parts he cut out.
Is The Princess Bride a critique of classics like Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers, that smother a ripping yarn under elaborate prose? A wry look at the differences between fairy tales and real life? Simply a funny, frenetic adventure? No matter how you read it, you'll put it on your "keeper" shelf. --Nona Vero
Review
"One of the funniest, most original, and deeply moving novels I have read in a long time." --Los Angeles Times
From the Inside Flap
As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the "S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.
Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.
What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.
In short, it's about everything.
Eventually to be adapted for the silver screen, THE PRINCESS BRIDE was originally a beautifully simple, insightfully comic story of what happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince in the world--and he turnsout to be a son of a bitch. Guaranteed to entertain both young and old alike by combining scenes of rowsing fantasy with hilarious reality, THE PRINCESS BRIDE secures Goldman's place as a master storyteller.
"From the Paperback edition.
From the Back Cover
A tale of true love and high adventure, pirates, princesses, giants, miracles, fencing, and a frightening assortment of wild beasts--The Princess Bride is a modern storytelling classic.
As Florin and Guilder teeter on the verge of war, the reluctant Princess Buttercup is devastated by the loss of her true love, kidnapped by a mercenary and his henchman, rescued by a pirate, forced to marry Prince Humperdinck, and rescued once again by the very crew who absconded with her in the first place. In the course of this dazzling adventure, she'll meet Vizzini--the criminal philosopher who'll do anything for a bag of gold; Fezzik--the gentle giant; Inigo--the Spaniard whose steel thirsts for revenge; and Count Rugen--the evil mastermind behind it all. Foiling all their plans and jumping into their stories is Westley, Princess Buttercup’s one true love and a very good friend of a very dangerous pirate.
William Goldman has been writing books and movies for more than forty years. He has won two Academy Awards (one for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and one for All the President's Men), and three Lifetime Achievement awards in screenwriting.About the Author
WILLIAM GOLDMAN (1931-2018) wrote books and movies for more than fifty years. He won two Academy Awards (for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men), and three Lifetime Achievement Awards in screenwriting.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Bride
The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette. Annette worked in Paris for the Duke and Duchess de Guiche, and it did not escape the Duke’s notice that someone extraordinary was polishing the pewter. The Duke’s notice did not escape the notice of the Duchess either, who was not very beautiful and not very rich, but plenty smart. The Duchess set about studying Annette and shortly found her adversary’s tragic flaw.
Chocolate.
Armed now, the Duchess set to work. The Palace de Guiche turned into a candy castle. Everywhere you looked, bonbons. There were piles of chocolate-covered mints in the drawing rooms, baskets of chocolate-covered nougats in the parlors.
Annette never had a chance. Inside a season, she went from delicate to whopping, and the Duke never glanced in her direction without sad bewilderment clouding his eyes. (Annette, it might be noted, seemed only cheerier throughout her enlargement. She eventually married the pastry chef and they both ate a lot until old age claimed them. Things, it might also be noted, did not fare so cheerily for the Duchess. The Duke, for reasons passing understanding, next became smitten with his very own mother-in-law, which caused the Duchess ulcers, only they didn’t have ulcers yet. More precisely, ulcers existed, people had them, but they weren’t called “ulcers.” The medical profession at that time called them “stomach pains” and felt the best cure was coffee dolloped with brandy twice a day until the pains subsided. The Duchess took her mixture faithfully, watching through the years as her husband and her mother blew kisses at each other behind her back. Not surprisingly, the Duchess’s grumpiness became legendary, as Voltaire has so ably chronicled. Except this was before Voltaire.)
The year Buttercup turned ten, the most beautiful woman lived in Bengal, the daughter of a successful tea merchant. This girl’s name was Aluthra, and her skin was of a dusky perfection unseen in India for eighty years. (There have only been eleven perfect complexions in all of India since accurate accounting began.) Aluthra was nineteen the year the pox plague hit Bengal. The girl survived, even if her skin did not.
When Buttercup was fifteen, Adela Terrell, of Sussex on the Thames, was easily the most beautiful creature. Adela was twenty, and so far did she outdistance the world that it seemed certain she would be the most beautiful for many, many years. But then one day, one of her suitors (she had 104 of them) exclaimed that without question Adela must be the most ideal item yet spawned. Adela, flattered, began to ponder on the truth of the statement. That night, alone in her room, she examined herself pore by pore in her mirror. (This was after mirrors.) It took her until close to dawn to finish her inspection, but by that time it was clear to her that the young man had been quite correct in his assessment: she was, through no real faults of her own, perfect.
As she strolled through the family rose gardens watching the sun rise, she felt happier than she had ever been. “Not only am I perfect,” she said to herself, “I am probably the first perfect person in the whole long history of the universe. Not a part of me could stand improving, how lucky I am to be perfect and rich and sought after and sensitive and young and . . .”
Young?
The mist was rising around her as Adela began to think. Well of course I’ll always be sensitive, she thought, and I’ll always be rich, but I don’t quite see how I’m going to manage to always be young. And when I’m not young, how am I going to stay perfect? And if I’m not perfect, well, what else is there? What indeed? Adela furrowed her brow in desperate thought. It was the first time in her life her brow had ever had to furrow, and Adela gasped when she realized what she had done, horrified that she had somehow damaged it, perhaps permanently. She rushed back to her mirror and spent the morning, and although she managed to convince herself that she was still quite as perfect as ever, there was no question that she was not quite as happy as she had been.
She had begun to fret.
The first worry lines appeared within a fortnight; the first wrinkles within a month, and before the year was out, creases abounded. She married soon thereafter, the selfsame man who accused her of sublimity, and gave him merry hell for many years.
Buttercup, of course, at fifteen, knew none of this. And if she had, would have found it totally unfathomable. How could someone care if she were the most beautiful woman in the world or not. What difference could it have made if you were only the third most beautiful. Or the sixth. (Buttercup at this time was nowhere near that high, being barely in the top twenty, and that primarily on potential, certainly not on any particular care she took of herself. She hated to wash her face, she loathed the area behind her ears, she was sick of combing her hair and did so as little as possible.) What she liked to do, preferred above all else really, was to ride her horse and taunt the farm boy.
The horse’s name was “Horse” (Buttercup was never long on imagination) and it came when she called it, went where she steered it, did what she told it. The farm boy did what she told him too. Actually, he was more a young man now, but he had been a farm boy when, orphaned, he had come to work for her father, and Buttercup referred to him that way still. “Farm Boy, fetch me this”; “Get me that, Farm Boy—quickly, lazy thing, trot now or I’ll tell Father.”
“As you wish.”
That was all he ever answered. “As you wish.” Fetch that, Farm Boy. “As you wish.” Dry this, Farm Boy. “As you wish.” He lived in a hovel out near the animals and, according to Buttercup’s mother, he kept it clean. He even read when he had candles. “I’ll leave the lad an acre in my will,” Buttercup’s father was fond of saying. (They had acres then.)
“You’ll spoil him,” Buttercup’s mother always answered.
“He’s slaved for many years; hard work should be rewarded.” Then, rather than continue the argument (they had arguments then too), they would both turn on their daughter.
“You didn’t bathe,” her father said.
“I did, I did” from Buttercup.
“Not with water,” her father continued. “You reek like a stallion.”
“I’ve been riding all day,” Buttercup explained.
“You must bathe, Buttercup,” her mother joined in. “The boys don’t like their girls to smell of stables.”
“Oh, the boys!” Buttercup fairly exploded. “I do not care about ‘the boys.’ Horse loves me and that is quite sufficient, thank you.”
She said that speech loud, and she said it often.
But, like it or not, things were beginning to happen.
Shortly before her sixteenth birthday, Buttercup realized that it had now been more than a month since any girl in the village had spoken to her. She had never much been close to girls, so the change was nothing sharp, but at least before there were head nods exchanged when she rode through the village or along the cart tracks. But now, for no reason, there was nothing. A quick glance away as she approached, that was all. Buttercup cornered Cornelia one morning at the blacksmith’s and asked about the silence. “I should think, after what you’ve done, you’d have the courtesy not to pretend to ask” came from Cornelia. “And what have I done?” “What? What? . . . You’ve stolen them.” With that, Cornelia fled, but Buttercup understood; she knew who “them” was.
The boys.
The village boys.
The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clodpated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys.
How could anybody accuse her of stealing them? Why would anybody want them anyway? What good were they? All they did was pester and vex and annoy. “Can I brush your horse, Buttercup?” “Thank you, but the farm boy does that.” “Can I go riding with you, Buttercup?” “Thank you, but I really do enjoy myself alone.” “You think you’re too good for anybody, don’t you, Buttercup?” “No; no I don’t. I just like riding by myself, that’s all.”
But throughout her sixteenth year, even this kind of talk gave way to stammering and flushing and, at the very best, questions about the weather. “Do you think it’s going to rain, Buttercup?” “I don’t think so; the sky is blue.” “Well, it might rain.” “Yes, I suppose it might.” “You think you’re too good for anybody, don’t you, Buttercup?” “No, I just don’t think it’s going to rain, that’s all.”
At night, more often than not, they would congregate in the dark beyond her window and laugh about her. She ignored them. Usually the laughter would give way to insult. She paid them no mind. If they grew too damaging, the farm boy handled things, emerging silently from his hovel, thrashing a few of them, sending them flying. She never failed to thank him when he did this. “As you wish” was all he ever answered.
When she was almost seventeen, a man in a carriage came to town and watched as she rode for provisions. He was still there on her return, peering out. She paid him no mind and, indeed, by himself he was not important. But he marked a turning point. Other men had gone out of their way to catch sight of her; other men had even ridden twenty miles for the privilege, as this man had. The importance here is that this was the first rich man who had bothered to do so, the first noble. And it was this man, whose name is lost to antiquity, who mentioned Buttercup to the Count.
Copyright © 1973, 1998, 2003 by William Goldman
Map and reader’s guide copyright © 2007 by Harcourt, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Product details
- ASIN : B003IEJZRY
- Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (October 8, 2007)
- Publication date : October 8, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 2246 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 417 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0747545189
- Best Sellers Rank: #6,820 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
William Goldman (b. 1931) is an Academy Award–winning author of screenplays, plays, memoirs, and novels. His first novel, The Temple of Gold (1957), was followed by the script for the Broadway army comedy Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (1961). He went on to write the screenplays for many acclaimed films, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President’s Men (1976), for which he won two Academy Awards. He adapted his own novels for the hit movies Marathon Man (1976) and The Princess Bride (1987).
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I have no recollection of when I first read William Goldman’s beloved novel, but I can tell you that in the decades since, I’ve read the book and seen the film at least a dozen times. It is very high on my list of all-time favorites. I never grow tired of it. I can pick this book up and start reading on any page and get sucked in immediately. And as soon as I’ve finished it, I could easily start reading from page one all over again. It is a case of true love.
Now, you have to have been living under a rock for the past few decades not to have an idea of what this tale is about. It’s the story of the beautiful milkmaid Buttercup and her love for the dashing farm boy Westley and all they go through in order to be together. Additionally, the novel uses the author’s life as a framing device. In what is purported to be a series of forwards and abridger’s notes, Goldman reflects on his personal history with “S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure.” He speaks candidly (and entirely fictitiously) of his family life, and perhaps somewhat less fictitiously of his professional life. And he tells the story of how his father first read him the tale when he was ten years old. When he asked if there were any sports in the book, the man replied:
“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautiful ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”
I ask you, what more could a reader possibly want?
The one thing Goldman forgot to list is humor. What has made this tale such a classic, in addition to the fact that it contains one of the five greatest kisses of all time, is the novel’s adroit humor. It ranges from sophisticated to glib to farcical, and it never fails to make me smile. Because of the brilliant film adaptation (also written by Goldman), many of the novel’s lines and passages have become cultural touchstones. Have you ever cried, “Inconceivable!” in a Wally Shawn lisp? Mandy Patinkin doesn’t go a day without someone coming up to him and proclaiming, “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!” Does the phrase “As you wish.” just give you chills? These characters are indelible, and Mr. Goldman’s humor has held up for 40 years. I believe people still be chuckling over this novel a hundred years from now. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse—some humor is simply timeless.
Clearly, I love a feel-good story, but most suffer from diminishing returns. Maybe it was awesome the first time you read it, pretty good the second, and less so on successive reads. Not so, The Princess Bride. If anything, I think my considerable affection for this novel grows with each successive reading. And I’m still spotting new things! On this read, for the first time, I spotted the fake blurbs at the front of the Kindle edition. (One was from “Shog Bongiorno, professor emeritus, Mid-European Literature, Columbia University,” LOL.)
Twenty-fifth and thirtieth anniversary editions of The Princess Bride have contained new forwards that continue the story that Goldman uses as the novel’s framing device. And after the novel’s end, there is a lengthy introduction to a substantial sample of the novel’s fictitious sequel, Buttercup’s Baby. I’ve read it all except for Buttercup’s Baby. I can only read that for the first time once, and I’m just not ready to experience it yet. Besides, maybe one day Mr. Goldman will elbow out Stephen King for the job and will finish the abridgement of the sequel. Hope springs eternal. And isn’t that the nature of true love?
When watching the movie The Princess Bride, I assumed it was full of typical 80s exaggeration and comedic meta story.
It was not. Listening to this audiobook was almost exactly like watching the movie except for the Grandpa and the child. Instead the framing device in the book is that of an author abridging a boring old satire into an exciting romantic adventure by cutting out all the dull bits and just leaving the good parts.
Each framing device works well for its chosen form of media and neither is better than the other.
The Narrator for this book reads dynamically and I can tell he has a great love for the story. The name of the narrator is the same as the director of the movie so that might be it, but I don't know for sure that it's the same guy.
Top reviews from other countries
Besides these two very obvious and attractive leads, there is a trio of misfit assassins, the scheming Italian hunchback Vizzini, the lean and mean Spanish swordsman, Inigo, whose facial scars betray a traumatic past and a vengeful spirit, and a powerful giant wrestler Fezzik. Rounding out the cast of colourful characters is the villainous prince, Humperdinck. Straightforward enough, but is it really?
Without giving too much away, Goldman positions his novel as an abridged version of a much older text by S. Morgenstern, capturing all its “good parts,” and leaving out the tedious details of the ponderous original. Suffice to say that the reader would miss out on the full genius of the novel if he were to skip the introduction and the commentary (biographical editorial asides that seem to tell another story) by Goldman because they are integral to the overall work and act as a framing narrative, but the work is so much more than that. You need to read it to discover it for yourself.
Included in this 25th anniversary edition is the first chapter of a purported sequel, “Buttercup’s Baby,” which adds to the intrigue and mythology of the original text, and expands the metafictional universe of Goldman’s work. A wholly satisfying read.
Una gran novela, he comprado esta novela tras haber visto la película unas 10 veces.
Elegí comprarla en Ingles así practico un poco. La lectura se comprensible para el que tenga un inglés medio-bajo.