Where is chapter 99?

Factual Questions
1

So I’m reading The Count of Monte Cristo, and i notice that there is no chapter 99. It goes straight from chapter XCVIII to chapter C. I’ve checked two versions of the book, and they are both missing said chapter. Is censorship rearing its ugly head? Was that chapter too disturbing to print? Is there some weird 19th century french superstition about 99 akin to not having a 13th floor in buildings? Could Alexander Dumas not count? Was it too hard to determine what “99” should be in roman numerals? What gives? Any guesses on why they skipped this chapter?

-b

2

Google. “Count Monte Cristo Chapter 99”

Chapter headings for the whole thing.
http://www.literature.org/authors/dumas-alexandre/the-count-of-monte-cristo/

The consensus on Google seems to be that Chapter 98 is “The Bell and Bottle Tavern”, Chapter 99 is “The Law”, and Chapter 100 is “The Apparition”.

Is any of the following text there?

http://www.literature.org/authors/dumas-alexandre/the-count-of-monte-cristo/chapter-98.html

http://www.literature.org/authors/dumas-alexandre/the-count-of-monte-cristo/chapter-99.html

http://www.literature.org/authors/dumas-alexandre/the-count-of-monte-cristo/chapter-100.html

I have no idea why this website has Chapter 99 as “The Bell and Bottle Tavern”.

Evidently there must be some disagreement somewhere as to which chapters are which, but “Alexander Dumas missing chapter” and “Alexander Dumas controversy” doesn’t turn up anything.

3

DDG: Is there any question you can’t answer? :slight_smile:

Both editions I have checked have “The Hotel of the Bell and Bottel” as chapter 98, and “The Law” and “The Apparition” as chapters 100 and 101, respectively. More precisely, the above chapters are listed as “XCVIII”, “C”, and “CI”. Truly this is a mystery of the first degree.

-b

4

As long as Google is running, I can always take a shot at it.

I found out that the Litrix website also has a list of Chapter Headings.

All their chapters are one chapter off from the Literature.org site, not just Chapter 99. They have “The Law” as Chapter 100 and “The Apparition” as Chapter 101". Is it possible that your hard copies have lumped text together, combined into chapters 98 and 100? Where a Chapter 99 would be, if they hadn’t cut it up and added it to chapters 98 and 100? Or something? I’m starting to get confused.

I have no idea why this all is. But it’s fascinating. We need a 19th century literature expert. Paging Bibliophage… :slight_smile:

Is it possible that your editions have a couple of chapters combined? Both these websites have the entire books posted on the Web. Check the actual text of your hard copies against what’s on the Web.

5

My Penguin Classics edition has the same chapters and numbers as DDG’s Google consensus.

98 = The Inn of the Bell and Bottle
99 = The Law
100 = The Apparition

I have a weak theory about what might be going on:
My first owned (as opposed to library) copy of The Count of Monte Cristo was a Bantam paperback and I sold it after realizing that it had been heavily cut. All of Edmond’s drug use and some other random stuff had been excised. Could the editors of your edition have cut stuff, combined two short chapters into a longer one, and then screwed up their renumbering?

Ah, the thot plickens. I’ve been looking through the introduction of my Penguin Classics edition, which is a 1996 translation by Robin Buss. In this intro, Buss offers a history of English translations of the novel, emphasizing that historically most of them have butchered Dumas’ text. Apparently Buss’ translation is the first since 1910 and the most popular modern day editions are based on the “classic” translation of 1846. Buss describes this version by saying “Still less acceptable, however, than the language of this Victorian translation [apparently it included deliberately antiquated speech and attempts at dialect, which Dumas didn’t write] is the huge number of omissions and bowdlerizations of Dumas’ text” (xvii). These omissions were not all sex or drug related, but also included dialogue, travel descriptions, descriptions of personality, etc. So it looks like my theory of scissor-mad editors plagued by innumeracy might have a little more backing IF your edition is based on a older translation. (It isn’t just the “classic” of 1846 that has these problems.)

But wait, there’s more! Buss goes on to write “As the basis for my translation I have used the edition by Schopp…and the three-volume edition in the Livre de Poche (1973). Both of these use an arrangement of chapters which differs slightly from that in the nineteenth-century English translations [my emphasis]” (xviii).

So I would reason that you’ve been looking at editions based on an older translation(s). Do you have a translator’s note or information about the translation on the copyright page?

Helluva story, isn’t it? :smiley: Now I’ve got to finish my Dante reading (not Dantès). Coincidentally, we talked about TCOMC briefly in my other English class today…

Works Cited:
Buss, Robin. Introduction. The Count of Monte Cristo. By Alexandre Dumas, Père. England: Penguin Books, 1996. vii-xiv.

6

I LOVE this place!

7

My edition says nothing about what translation is being used, but as it was printed in 1955, it is obviously not the newer translation you were referring to. The strange thing is that all the chapters that have been heretofore listed in this thread are included in my edition, just incorrectly numbered. No one has listed a chapter that should be between “The Hotel…” and “The Law”, yet that is where the indiscrepancy is. Interesting…

-b