Jane Eyre

Who's your favorite character?

Mr. Rochester is by far my favorite character. He's real in the sense that he's not perfect. He's twice Jane's age, he's described as unattractive, he's constantly putting people through tests and furthermore he locks his wife in an attic. This is why he's so great, because he is a genuine-character. He's not a prince who says all of the right things and he provokes passion within Jane, which in my eyes, is what Jane struggles with the entire book and finds within Rochester.
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This one is easy - Jane herself, of course. Especially the scene in the garden, and when she teases Rochester at the end.

In a close call, I'm gonna go with Helen.

And Miss Scatcherd is my absolutely favorite literary villain. “You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this morning!” And her name sounds like fingernails scratching across Jane's (broken) slate.

I need guidance on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and specifically whether World Publishing’s “Rainbow Classics” edition (1946) was abridged or unabridged. I have little experience with these particular editions, and the original owner of the copy is question – who might actually have known whether it’s complete or abridged – is no longer with us.

What I do know about “Rainbow Classics” generally comes mostly from looking at our copy and searching for other LT Works having “Rainbow Classics” among their Editions. “Rainbow Classics” appears to have been a Publisher Series of the 1940s; frequently introduced by May Lamberton Becker, who may also have edited some editions; and they’re typically illustrated. The “Rainbow Classics” Series name, the tone of Becker’s introduction, and the illustrations together make me think the Series’ was meant to introduce literary classics to younger readers. And, in my experience, such editions in that era seem often seem to be abridgements but aren’t always identified as such. (One of our Gulliver’s Travels being a case in point.)

On the other hand, the following LT Works all include “Rainbow Classics” among their Editions, and none of them suggests abridgement:

Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins, Jack and Jill, Jo’s Boys, Little Women, and An Old-Fashioned Girl,
Hans Christian Andersen, Fairy Tales,
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice,
May Lamberton Becker (editor), The Rainbow Mother Goose,
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (yes, the book in question!),
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights,
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans,
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, The Little Lame Prince,
Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe ,
Charles Dickens, Christmas Stories,
Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates,
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Book of Sherlock Holmes,
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers,
Jakob Grimm & Wilhelm Grimm, Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (possibly a selection),
J. Walker McSpadden, Robin Hood and His Merry Outlaws,
John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River,
Anna Sewell, Black Beauty,
Johanna Spyri, Heidi,
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child’s Garden of Verses, Kidnapped, and Treasure Island,
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels,
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Prince and the Pauper,
Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island,
Iris Vinton, Boy on the Mayflower, and
Johann David Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson.

Any help you can offer is appreciated. Thank you!

#6 by jasbro>
I did a little more poking around (after my post in the Combiners thread), and I found several eBay listings with Rainbow Classics books, with large pictures that sometimes include front matter / text / back cover. Many of them do mention "the special contents of this edition", so perhaps they are indeed abridged/simplified (but I don't have copies of the canonical texts to make comparisons with the photos where the text is shown):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Jules-Verne-Twenty-Thousand-Leagues-Under-the-Sea-Kurt-W...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1946-BOOK-TREASURE-ISLAND-RAINBOW-CLASSICS-ILLUS...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1947-GULLIVERS-TRAVELS-Jonathan-Swift-World-Publishing-R...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HEIDI-Book-1946-Hardcover-by-Johanna-Spyri-World-Publish...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Robinson-Crusoe-Rainbow-Classic-Daniel-Defoe-1946-HC-DJ-...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1948-GULLIVERS-TRAVELS-JONATHAN-SWIFT-R-M-POWERS...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rainbow-Classics-The-Swiss-Family-Robinson-Robin-Hood-An...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Book-Jos-Boys-Louisa-May-Alcott-Rainbow-Classics...

I checked on AbeBooks for the "Rainbow Classic" edition of JE and it seems that it tallies in at 504 pages. (Oh, and I see this tallies with the Amazon page-count.) This sounds about right for an unabridged edition. Compare some of my own unabridged editions:

Norton Critical (3d ed, 2001), not counting the supplementary materials, comes to 385 pages.
"International Classics" (illustrated, 1921) comes to 465 pages.
J.M. Dent (illustrated, 1922) comes to 457 pages.

And darn you. "FULL COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT," says one AbeBooks description. This looks interesting, and some of the copies are fairly cheap. Like I need another JE edition sitting in my Bronte bookcase!

Seriously, it's impossible to say for absolute certainty without seeing the text, of course, but that kind of a page-count seems quite credible for unabridged.

Incidentally, I did a copy-and-paste to get a word-count from the Gutenberg edition and it comes to just about (or a little over) 190,000 words, so that brings us to a words-per-page count of just about 380 for the "Rainbow Classic" edition, which sounds like a reasonable figure, assuming somewhat large type (fit for children?) in the "Rainbow Classic" edition.

For reference, a "Rainbow Classics" Publisher Series is now added at: http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Rainbow%2520Classics

It looks like your question was answered. I have long been a Bronte fan. So I found this site and was pleased to see a familiar name. Hope you are well. I have commented on my favorite Bronte below. Cyss

I have read Wuthering Heights three times. Once when I was quite young and then all of my sympathies went to Heathcliff. I may even have excused him for his later inexcusable behavior. When I was in my twenties all of my sympathy went to Cathy. And later when I was retired I could understand the housekeeper's and felt as if I were seeing it all from her viewpoint though that did not affect me that way before. As for a favorite character ??? I suppose it would have to be the moors themselves.

The moors! I love that answer!

Have you ever stood close to the main street in Haworth and looked out over them.... you just never forget it.

Jane - the ultimate survivor with a timeless spirit - 167 years old and still relevant!