fuddlyduddly

Readers Digest Condensed Books were a series of anthologies published quarterly that are comprised of a few popular novels of the day, usually in a few different genres. These books would be pruned and shortened before publication, with passages chopped out and reworded to shorten them or make them more palatable for readers. The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, was subjected to this treatment in the Spring 1960 edition of the series, cut down to a sparse 97 pages; my Penguin Classics copy totals 187 pages. I found this condensed version of Hill House by chance in a little lending library, and is one of my favourite novels, I was very curious how this book was affected, since Jackson has such a singular and unique voice as an author; unsurprisingly, the book was altered quite a bit.  Below is a chart of the changes as I've logged them; the original text is on the left, the Reader's Digest edition on the right. Any text deleted from the original is highlighted in red,