I’ve always thought that abridged versions of books were for the lazy reader and usually fairly bad (the abridged audiobook version of The Eye of the World, for example, I found atrousious). Are there any examples of when an abridged work of fiction might be preferable to the original, or at least as good in quality? I ask that as I consider whether to read The Count of Monte Cristo (the version that I saw at the bookstore - Oxford World Classic, I think - looked daunting, to say the least) and having found the five days of captivity in The Three Musketeers difficult to slug through.
The Penguin abridged edition of War and Peace didn’t have any parts cut out, but it eliminated a lot of confusion by using just one name for each character. In my opinion, this made it much easier to follow, which made the book immensely more interesting to read.
The Princess Bride. The story you saw in the movie is based on about 30% of the book. The other 70% contains nothing of any interest from a narrative perspective.
Which, IMO, is an improvement; in the unabridged version, S. Morgenstern tended to tangent and ramble.