Wednesday, July 11, 2007

War & Peace - publishing the first draft?

I first read about this in the August issue of The Writer magazine. And then I went digging and found this article from CBC.ca.

Apparently, Harper Collins is publishing this fall, War and Peace: The Original edition based on the first draft Tolstoy wrote of the novel. It's almost 600 pages slimmer and apparently has a slightly happier ending.

Poor Tolstoy must be turning over in his grave. How would you like it if the first draft of your novel was publishing without your consent?

1 comment:

WordVixen said...

Hm... I wonder if his first line was originally better. ;-)

I actually would like to read both versions just to compare them. And I don't think I'd mind if a first draft of mine was published so long as it was made known that it was a first draft.