Jean Val Jean
Jean Val Jean is a 1935 novel by Solomon Cleaver. It is a much abbreviated retelling in English of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables.
According to the publisher's preface, around the turn of the 20th century, Cleaver, a young
Rudy Wiebe, a Canadian author and professor of English, described it as "a sanitized text approved for Canadian children by both the Catholic and public school boards", in which Hugo's lengthy history of the Paris sewers is "eviscerated into one subordinate clause",[1] the entire passage through the sewers condensed "from 39 pages to 627 words" and the last 2 chapters replaced with a single hymn verse. He recalled reading it at the age of 12 and later finding it shelved in the university library's Canadian Literature section.[2]
Publication history
- Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company Limited, 1935, 1951, 1957, 1959, 1962.
- ISBN 0-920284-17-5
See also
Notes
- ISBN 9780307373472.
- ISBN 9780307367150.