I’ve been wanting to read Great Expectations (and maybe other Dickens novels) for a while, but honestly, the old English feels impossible. The sentences are so long and heavy that I get overwhelmed after a few lines.
Are there any good versions rewritten in modern English that still keep the story and emotion intact? Like something that feels natural to read, not like homework.
Would appreciate any recs — books, websites, or even audiobooks that make Dickens more readable 🙏
Edit:- Is there any line to line retelling of the book ? Just in simple English.
by THEGOD-001
16 Comments
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a retelling of David Copperfield. It’s great and much more readable than Dickens.
This is what education is for. Expand your mind. Learn some history and try to enjoy the journey. People would give anything to be able to read lost languages. In 100 years People will be wondering wtf is 6 7
For reference, Dickens is not “Old English”, it’s modern English. The writing is just a stylistic choice that was popular in the 19th century. Old English looks like this:
> Þa on morgen gehyrdon þæt þæs cyninges þægnas þe him beæftan wæron þæt se cyning ofslægen wæs. Ða ridon hie þyder ond his ealdorman osric ond wiferð his þegn ond þa men þe he him bæftan ær læfde ond þone æþeling on þære byrig metton þær se cyning ofslægen læg.
If your concern is that the sentences that Dickens crafts are too complicated and need to be simplified for you to enjoy them, then that’s also fine—it’s your free time. But if you want to enjoy Dickens, a large part of the enjoyment comes from the way that he writes.
There are ample study guides out there to help you along. It’ll get easier as you get used to the language.
I know you don’t want it to feel like homework but reading is a skill. The only way to improve is through practice.
I never thought of Dickens as old English.
Keep at it, you’ll quickly adjust to it. Slowing down is not a bad thing and completely worth it when it comes to Dickens.
I tried to read “A Tale of Two Cities” like three times (as an adult) but couldn’t get past the first dozen or so pages because the prose just felt so *dense*. It was really demoralizing. Then I listened to it as an audiobook and it was fucking awesome.
I’ve now read it (as in, read the actual printed version) three times now.
Hardly. You’ll live.
Just read it, but take your time to let the mental imagery sink in. Something like ‘A Christmas Carol’ is shorter, and the story is very familiar so your brain will already have a good frame of reference. That and the writing is very witty.
Edit fixed a word.
A thing that is successful for new or neurotypical readers can be to watch the movie first and then read the source material.
An example I have used before is to watch the movie “Clueless” with Alicia Silverstone and then go read Emma by Jane Austen. It is already a readable classic book IMO but the context clues of the movie help put perspective to the politics of the day (example: how gay-coded characters are described).
I feel like Dune and LOTR is made more accessible by the movies as well. When you know the thread of the story then the more lumbering feeling prose is easier to understand.
Start with A Christmas Carol. It’s still…very Dickens in style, but it’s a shorter story with faster pacing. It will help acclimatise you to his style of writing.
(But yeah, he can be hard work at times. He used to release the stories as serials in newspapers, and I’m pretty sure he got paid by the word!)
Try a shorter, easier book first like *A Christmas Carol*.
IMO, modern literature in English is full of simple language and quuck action. Take your time with Dickens. It is so worth it. It will expand your mind abd your vocabulary!
Great Illustrated Classics series? All the plot and characters, but really condensed I read them aloud to my children.
Like any other skill, it just takes practice! Maybe start with a shorter one, listen to the audiobook first (or watch the movie with subtitles on), then try reading it. See what helps 🙂 when I’m trying to learn a second language, if it’s a story I already know, my brain will fill in the context and help me understand the language better. In high school Spanish classes, teachers would sometimes show us Disney movies dubbed into Spanish, and already knowing the stories made a huge difference in how I absorbed the language. I think a similar thing might work well here 🙂
Good on you for challenging yourself with new and difficult literature, it’s worth keeping at it!
Accept the language, read it like someone reading aloud as it blends together a lot of the words that look weird but sound like what a normal set of words, just keep reading it and your brain will slowly start to interpret it better. I would highly recommend reading along with an audiobook to maybe learn some of the pronunciation which makes it much easier to understand.