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The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition

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"The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition" is a wonderful chronicle on the life and writings of that perky Dutch teenager. Now in my late thirties, I first read her diary at thirteen. I was just a frisky Australian schoolboy trying to learn more about the mysterious world of girls. That first read, though, put me in tears. The diary enchanted me and I wanted to know more about Anne, her family, and those fatal frosted footsteps beyond the Secret Annex.

In time, I would learn more, much more. As the "The Critical Edition" shows there is in fact not one diary but several as Anne rethought and revised her own work. "The Critical Edition" places the various revisions side by side so readers can gain an insight into how Anne constructed her work. There is genius in Anne's work but it didn't always come in the first draft. As inspiration to us mortals, she too, had to work at it.

"The Critical Edition" has an especially fascinating account of the publishing history of the diary. Anne's father was the key to publication and it would be some time before he could come to terms with Anne's incredibly honest account of her developing sexuality and those raw comments on her mother, Edith. Publication also came at a time when people's minds were barely coping with understanding World War II and its legacy. For the first time, "The Critical Edition" highlights the difficulties with translating Anne's diary into German and how, for some, it had come too soon and too fast after the great conflict. Yet, for others, the diary was too good to be the work of - in Anne's words - an "incurable chatterbox". Again, this scholarly (and lengthy) work reveals the outcome of analysis that proves the diary's authenticity.

For the reader there is the danger that the light shed on Anne's life and work by this book will lower her from the enormous pedestal she has arisen. In fact, Anne's spirit emerges even stronger. "The Diary of Anne Frank: the Critical Edition" enhances Anne's irrevocable message that freedom and good can reign over a corrupt and evil world.

This edition of the famous diary of Anne Frank is unlike any other. Subtitled "The Critical Edition" it includes not only the published version in the translation by Mrs. B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, but also everything that was withheld -- at the request of Anne's father -- from the original published version.

While in hiding, Anne heard on a radio broadcast that after the war the Dutch government wanted to collect memoirs and diaries of citizens' wartime experiences. Anne decided to start a revision of her diary, clarifying certain passages and adding in more detail, while deleting items that she deemed unimportant or too personal (Anne wrote very candidly about her own sexuality). The critical edition of her diary includes Anne's first diary, her revisions, and the final, published version.

In addition, this volume contains exhaustively researched sections on the arrest and betrayal of the members of the "Secret Annex," the publishing history of the diary, an account of the creation of the play version, a chronicle of the attacks made on the diary's authenticity, and an incredibly meticulous handwriting analysis comparing letters known to have been written by Anne with excerpts from the diary itself.

I first read "The Diary of Anne Frank" when I was thirteen years old. I reread it about every three or four years and it speaks to me on a new level every time. It has become my all-time favorite book. With this beautiful edition, I am once again disovering this amazing document and this remarkable child.

I read the Diary of Anne Frank when I was nine or ten years old. I liked it then, but I understood little of what was happening, and what she was saying. When I was fourteen, I went to Holland, and saw the house where she, her family, and the Van Daans had been in hiding. I bought the Diary there, and read it before the remainder of my trip was out. (I was in Europe for ten days) I was amazed at how she often felt the same things I did. I was also amazed at how well she could write. As an aspiring writer, I was enthralled with her devotion to detail, and reality, but at the same time I loved how she poured out her soul to the diary. Now, at the ripe old age of sixteen, I hold Anne Frank up as a writer to be respected and admired. I also wonder sometimes why it is that I am allowed to live to sixteen, and she was not. But I don't think her diary would have affected the world as much had she survived the camps. I think all of us after reading this diary will carry a little piece of the girl we know as Anne Frank with us forever.

I really didnt know much about Anne Frank and the Holocaust until my seventh grade year. But once i learned about it i developed an interest in it. It was a sad SAD thing to study but it is life which i want to learn more about and it is history which i love to study. Anne Frank was the most interesting person that i studied about in the Holocaust. Read the book and find out just how interesting she was!!!!

I love this book, because it make me understand that all three versions of the diary that know Anne wrote her original diaries,two notebooks and 324 loose sheet while she was hiding.

Anne did write alot about her friends, sexual feeelings, and fighting between her and her mother. The second one is missing,so she did finish the rewrite on loose sheet which is version B that the dated from December 7, 1942 to December 22, 1943. The last page of the rewrite on loose sheet on March 29,1994 about listening the radio broadcasting the Duth Exile from london that collected the daries and letters that people want to read then after the war. Anne did all the rewrite, but she never finished sadly, on August 4, 1944 the day of the arrest the nazi interupted her. She is a great writer of all times. I'm very obessed Anne Frank, because she is so smart!.

Anyone want to about Anne's life was Melissa Muller's Biography "Anne Frank" This is a great book!

The book condition itself was posted as very good I believe. It was not. It had scrubbed mold/mildew marks and was missing the jacket. Pages were not in the best shape either. This was a great disappointment.

As for reading the book, there are 3 different version of the diary and they are very hard to read. All three are on the same page. I had great hopes for this and they got dashed.

A beautifully written autobiography of Anne Frank when she was hiding with her family and few others in her father's office, from the Nazis. How she matures in her thoughts, and the way she describes the life in the confined space makes you feel that you are there in that building with her. I was really afraid as I went through the pages hoping that the Nazis don't catch her in this page. The book really brings tear to youe eyes.

This book is something that is absolutely wonderful, and life changing. It is so because of its author- a teen-age Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis from 1942 to 1945. Reading this allows you to feel what she was feeling, expeirience what she experienced. And all of it is true. It all happened, and the diary allows you to know Anne Frank, in a sence. Her thoughts and ideas were real, and they remain to be because of the diary. Anne goes on, and reading what she went through will change your life.

The Diary of Anne Frank is one of those books many people read in school. For reasons I don't remember I was not one of them. I stumbled on this version and decided it was time.

Overall this is an excellent compendium of the 3 versions of the diary. The first 175 pages give you the history of the Frank Family, how they were arrested and suspects for betrayal. It also delves into the challenges of Fraud that has been lodged against the diaries. The author shows how these claims are baseless and the gives you the process used to debunk the claims.

This is not a simple read. This book is more for the scholar then the casual reader. Especially when faced with up to three versions of each passage in the diaries. The casual reader will probably find themselves skipping the other passages.

My wife said there were versions that painted Anne as a Saint and I did not see that in this edition. I saw the average teenage girl with the usual complaints about family and the horrible times she found herself in. Yet, she managed to find herself infatuated with boys and tried to outlast the fate that would happen to her.

This is a book all should read especially when considering it has been banned a few times.

I'm glad someone decided to provide an uncensored version of Anne Frank's diary in English. This book contains English translations of three versions of Anne Frank's diaries, printed in such a way as to make it easier to compare them than if they had been printed back to back or in separate volumes. One version is Anne's fictionalized version. One is the, censored version as it was introduced to the Puritanical United States. The unabridged version is excellent, but not for prudes. Anne Frank was apparently bisexual, as well as a young woman of great intellect, insight and literary talent! I was amazed at how well I was able to relate to her, even though she was of another gender, born into a different race, raised on a different continent (Europe), about a quarter of a century before me! Thanks to this book, I fell in love with her!