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William Goldman

The Princess Bride (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Paperback – July 15, 2003

by William Goldman (Author)

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What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?

As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the "S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.

Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.

What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.

In short, it's about everything.

Eventually to be adapted for the silver screen, THE PRINCESS BRIDE was originally a beautifully simple, insightfully comic story of what happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince in the world--and he turnsout to be a son of a bitch. Guaranteed to entertain both young and old alike by combining scenes of rowsing fantasy with hilarious reality, THE PRINCESS BRIDE secures Goldman's place as a master storyteller.

From the Paperback edition.

Print length

429 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ballantine Books
Publication date

July 15, 2003
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.25 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0345418263
ISBN-13

978-0345418265
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Popular Highlights in this book

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"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die,"
Highlighted by 1,672 Kindle readers
"Life is pain," his mother said. "Anybody that says different is selling something."
Highlighted by 1,387 Kindle readers
"You keep using that word!" the Spaniard snapped. "I don't think it means what you think it does."
Highlighted by 1,242 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Review

"His swashbuckling fable is nutball funny . . . A 'classic' medieval melodrama that sounds like all the Saturday serials you ever saw, feverishly reworked by the Marx Brothers."
--Newsweek

"One of the funniest, most original, and deeply moving novels I have read in a long time."
--Los Angeles Times

"Though later in life he was perhaps more guarded concerning the human condition, there can be no doubt that at this stage of his career, especially with The Princess Bride, Morgenstern was the most joyous of all Florinese writers."
--HENREID PAVOL
   Author of Middle Morgenstern

"Having taught the first course in Morgenstern given by an American Ivy League University, I am of course most pleased to see this long overdue edition. At first, Goldman's abridgement proved nettlesome to me. But upon rereading, clearly it has virtues of its own."
--SHOG BONGIORNO
   Professor Emeritus, Mid-European Literature
   Columbia University

From the Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?

As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the "S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.

Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.

What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.

In short, it's about everything.

Eventually to be adapted for the silver screen, THE PRINCESS BRIDE w

About the Author

William Goldman has been writing books and movies for more than forty years. He has won two Academy Awards (for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men), and three Lifetime Achievement awards in screenwriting. His novel Marathon Man has made him very famous in dentist's offices around the world.

From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

How is such a thing possible? I'll do my best to explain. As a child, I had simply no interest in books. I hated reading, I was very bad at it, and besides, how could you take the time to read when there were games that shrieked for playing? Basketball, baseball, marbles--I could never get enough. I wasn't even good at them, but give me a football and an empty playground and I could invent last-second triumphs that would bring tears to your eyes. School was torture. Miss Roginski, who was my teacher for the third through fifth grades, would have meeting after meeting with my mother. "I don't feel Billy is perhaps extending himself quite as much as he might." Or, "When we test him, Billy does really exceptionally well, considering his class standing." Or, most often, "I don't know, Mrs. Goldman: what are we going to do about Billy?"

What are we going to do about Billy? That was the phrase that haunted me those first ten years. I pretended not to care, but secretly I was petrified. Everyone and everything was passing me by. I had no real friends, no single person who shared an equal interest in all games. I seemed busy, busy, busy, but I suppose, if pressed, I might have admitted that, for all my frenzy, I was very much alone.

"What are we going to do about you, Billy?"

"I don't know, Miss Roginski."

"How could you have failed this reading test? I've heard you use every word with my own ears."

"I'm sorry, Miss Roginski. I must not have been thinking."

"You're always thinking, Billy. You just weren't thinking about the reading test."

I could only nod.

"What was it this time?"

"I don't know. I can't remember."

"Was it Stanley Hack again?" (Stan Hack was the Cubs' third baseman for these and many other years. I saw him play once from a bleacher seat, and even at that distance he had the sweetest smile I had ever seen and to this day I swear he smiled at me several times. I just worshipped him. He could also hit a ton.)

"Bronko Nagurski. He's a football player. A great football player, and the paper last night said he might come back and play for the Bears again. He retired when I was little but if he came back and I could get someone to take me to a game, I could see him play and maybe if whoever took me also knew him, I could meet him after and maybe if he was hungry, I might let him have a sandwich I might have brought with me. I was trying to figure out what kind of sandwich Bronko Nagurski would like."

She just sagged at her desk. "You've got a wonderful imagination, Billy."

I don't know what I said. Probably "thank you" or something.

"I can't harness it, though," she went on. "Why is that?"

"I think it's that probably I need glasses and I don't read because the words are so fuzzy. That would explain why I'm all the time squinting. Maybe if I went to an eye doctor who could give me glasses I'd be the best reader in class and you wouldn't have to keep me after school so much."

She just pointed behind her. "Get to work cleaning the blackboards, Billy."

"Yes, ma'am." I was the best at cleaning blackboards.

"Do they look fuzzy?" Miss Roginski said after a while.

"Oh, no, I just made that up." I never squinted either. But she just seemed so whipped about it. She always did. This had been going on for three grades now.

"I'm just not getting through to you somehow."

"It's not your fault, Miss Roginski." (It wasn't. I just worshipped her too. She was all dumpy and fat but I used to wish she'd been my mother. I could never make that really come out right, unless she had been married to my father first, and then they'd gotten divorced and my father had married my mother, which was okay, because Miss Roginski had to work, so my father got custody of me--that all made sense. Only they never seemed to know each other, my dad and Miss Roginski. Whenever they'd meet, each year during the Christmas pageant when all the parents came, I'd watch the two of them like crazy, hoping for some kind of secret glimmer or look that could only mean, "Well, how are you, how's your life been going since our divorce?" but no soap. She wasn't my mother, she was just my teacher, and I was her own personal and growing disaster area.)

"You're going to be all right, Billy."

"I sure hope so, Miss Roginski."

"You're a late bloomer, that's all. Winston Churchill was a late bloomer and so are you."

I was about to ask her who he played for but there was something in her tone that made me know enough not to.

"And Einstein."

Him I also didn't know. Or what a late bloomer was either. But boy, did I ever want to be one.

When I was twenty-six, my first novel, The Temple of Gold, was published by Alfred A. Knopf. (Which is now part of Random House which is now part of R.C.A. which is just part of what's wrong with publishing in America today which is not part of this story.) Anyway, before publication, the publicity people at Knopf were talking to me, trying to figure what they could do to justify their salaries, and they asked who did I want to send advance copies to that might be an opinion maker, and I said I didn't know anybody like that and they said, "Think, everybody knows somebody," and so I got all excited because the idea just came to me and I said, "Okay, send a copy to Miss Roginski," which I figure was logical and terrific because if anybody made my opinions, she did. (She's all through The Temple of Gold, by the way, only I called her "Miss Patulski"--even then I was creative.)

"Who?" this publicity lady said.

"This old teacher of mine, you send her a copy and I'll sign it and maybe write a little--" I was really excited until this publicity guy interrupted with, "We were thinking of someone more on the national scene."

Very soft I said, "Miss Roginski, you just send her a copy, please, okay?"

"Yes," he said, "yes, by all means."

You remember how I didn't ask who Churchill played for because of her tone? I must have hit that same tone too just then. Anyway, something must have happened because he right away wrote her name down asking was it ski or sky.

"With the i," I told him, already hiking through the years, trying to get the inscription fantastic for her. You know, clever and modest and brilliant and perfect, like that.

"First name?"

That brought me back fast. I didn't know her first name. "Miss" was all I ever called her. I didn't know her address either. I didn't even know if she was alive or not. I hadn't been back to Chicago in ten years; I was an only child, both folks gone, who needed Chicago?

"Send it to Highland Park Grammar School," I said, and first what I thought I'd write was "For Miss Roginski, a rose from your late bloomer," but then I thought that was too conceited, so I decided "For Miss Roginski, a weed from your late bloomer," would be more humble. Too humble, I decided next, and that was it for bright ideas that day. I couldn't think of anything. Then I thought, What if she doesn't even remember me? Hundreds of students over the years, why should she? So finally in desperation I put, "For Miss Roginski from William Goldman--Billy you called me and you said I would be a late bloomer and this book is for you and I hope you like it. I was in your class for third, fourth and fifth grades, thank you very much. William Goldman."

The book came out and got bombed; I stayed in and did the same, adjusting. Not only did it not establish me as the freshest thing since Kit Marlowe, it also didn't get read by anybody. Not true. It got read by any number of people, all of whom I knew. I think it is safe to say, however, no strangers savored it. It was a grinding experience and I reacted as indicated above. So when Miss Roginski's note came--late--it got sent to Knopf and they took their time relaying it--I was really ready for a lift.

"Dear Mr. Goldman: Thank you for the book. I have not had time yet to read it, but I am sure it is a fine endeavor. I of course remember you. I remember all my students. Yours sincerely, Antonia Roginski."

What a crusher. She didn't remember me at all. I sat there holding the note, rocked. People don't remember me. Really. It's not any paranoid thing; I just have this habit of slipping through memories. It doesn't bother me all that much, except I guess that's a lie; it does. For some reason, I test very high on forgettability.

So when Miss Roginski sent me that note making her just like everyone else, I was glad she'd never gotten married, I'd never liked her anyway, she'd always been a rotten teacher, and it served her right her first name was Antonia.

"I didn't mean it," I said out loud right then. I was alone in my one-room job on Manhattan's glamorous West Side and talking to myself. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I went on. "You got to believe that, Miss Roginski."

What had happened, of course, was that I'd finally seen the postscript. It was on the back of the thank-you note and what it said was, "Idiot. Not even the immortal S. Morgenstern could feel more parental than I."

S. Morgenstern! The Princess Bride. She remembered!

Flashback.

1941. Autumn. I'm a little cranky because my radio won't get the football games. Northwestern is playing Notre Dame, it starts at one, and by one-thirty I can't get the game. Music, news, soap operas, everything, but not the biggie. I call for my mother. She comes. I tell her my radio's busted, I can't...

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Anniversary edition (July 15, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 429 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345418263
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345418265
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.25 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,202,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,990 in Historical Fantasy (Books)

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William Goldman

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William Goldman (b. 1931) is an Academy Award–winning author of screenplays, plays, memoirs, and novels. His first novel, The Temple of Gold (1957), was followed by the script for the Broadway army comedy Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (1961). He went on to write the screenplays for many acclaimed films, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President’s Men (1976), for which he won two Academy Awards. He adapted his own novels for the hit movies Marathon Man (1976) and The Princess Bride (1987).

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L.D.Bronstein

Metatextural without being insufferable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 31, 2023

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The important thing here is that the book is not like the movie. The movie is not bad. This is not one of those "The book was better" reviews. The movie is good, and it's wholesome. In the book we have a frame story of a grandpa telling a funny story of derring do to his sick grandson, and that's sweet and adorable.

In the novel we get the a frame story about the author - who keeps breaking into the story - thinking about cheating on his wife, and sending a book he fondly remembered (But never read) to his son, then getting upset when his son is too fat and dumb to understand it. (Not sure why 'fat' and 'dumb' are associated in this book, but they are) It's all pretty hilarious, but it is most emphatically not sweet and adorable.

The story itself is a book that his father read him when he was young. After his son failed to read the book, William Goldman (The author) read it and discovered that it was absolutely nothing like he remembered, and evidently his dad was just making it up. so he decided to write the story his dad told him, rather than the one that's really in the book. It's a little unclear if his dad's version broadly followed the 'original' (Nonexistent) novel, or if he was making it up entirely. First time I read it, I came out of it with the impression that his dad was secretly illiterate and making it up to hide his shame, but the second time I read it, I was far less convinced of that.

Anyway - the first third is hilarious, then it kind of loses a wheel when telling the story of Inigo and Fezik, and becomes much more somber. It picks up again, but never really quite recovers the giddy enthusiasm of the first third because, in the end, Goldman is too cynical to believe in happily ever after, but also can't bear to destroy his characters, so he kind of does it both ways. You'll understand what I mean if you read it.

Which you totally should do, just don't expect it to be sweet, and be prepared for it to get sad in the last third.

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DT

Totally fictional and not for kids

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 27, 2023

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I’ve watched the movie many times and thought I should read the book. I’m glad I did. This is not a children’s book. (The movie is better for kids, but there are still some unsuitable parts like the fight with the creatures in the Fire Swamp and the torture of Westley.) Though the story is mostly fun, it has many dark and disturbing scenes that go too far. I was confused at first since it says this version was abridged by Goldman from a classic book by S. Morgenstern. And there are two introductions and interjections throughout where Goldman talks about traveling to Florin for research and why certain parts were cut out from the "original" book. However, this is all fiction. This is the brilliance of Goldman. There is no original classic book, there is no S. Morgenstern, there is no country of Florin. The story of the story was just as tongue in cheek and entertaining. Except for the dark disturbing parts that I found too dark and disturbing. A short “excerpt” of the sequel Buttercup’s Baby is included at the end with a cliffhanger. I didn’t like this addition as it was darker and unfinished. Much of the book (and movie) are clever and I love the banter. I wish Goldman would’ve written the entire novel in a lighter way without delving into the darker parts.

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Doug Bruce

Always a fun read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 27, 2023

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Always a fun read ever since I first read it in 1974. The movie is always wonderful as well but, the book is still that much more fun because of adding ones own imagination.

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True love—for a book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 17, 2013

Verified Purchase

Years ago, I was asked one of those silly questions that readers ask each other: “If you could be any literary character, who would you be?” Without hesitation, I replied, “Princess Buttercup.” After all, what woman in her right mind wouldn’t crave a life of true love and high adventure?

I have no recollection of when I first read William Goldman’s beloved novel, but I can tell you that in the decades since, I’ve read the book and seen the film at least a dozen times. It is very high on my list of all-time favorites. I never grow tired of it. I can pick this book up and start reading on any page and get sucked in immediately. And as soon as I’ve finished it, I could easily start reading from page one all over again. It is a case of true love.

Now, you have to have been living under a rock for the past few decades not to have an idea of what this tale is about. It’s the story of the beautiful milkmaid Buttercup and her love for the dashing farm boy Westley and all they go through in order to be together. Additionally, the novel uses the author’s life as a framing device. In what is purported to be a series of forwards and abridger’s notes, Goldman reflects on his personal history with “S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure.” He speaks candidly (and entirely fictitiously) of his family life, and perhaps somewhat less fictitiously of his professional life. And he tells the story of how his father first read him the tale when he was ten years old. When he asked if there were any sports in the book, the man replied:

“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautiful ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”

I ask you, what more could a reader possibly want?

The one thing Goldman forgot to list is humor. What has made this tale such a classic, in addition to the fact that it contains one of the five greatest kisses of all time, is the novel’s adroit humor. It ranges from sophisticated to glib to farcical, and it never fails to make me smile. Because of the brilliant film adaptation (also written by Goldman), many of the novel’s lines and passages have become cultural touchstones. Have you ever cried, “Inconceivable!” in a Wally Shawn lisp? Mandy Patinkin doesn’t go a day without someone coming up to him and proclaiming, “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!” Does the phrase “As you wish.” just give you chills? These characters are indelible, and Mr. Goldman’s humor has held up for 40 years. I believe people still be chuckling over this novel a hundred years from now. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse—some humor is simply timeless.

Clearly, I love a feel-good story, but most suffer from diminishing returns. Maybe it was awesome the first time you read it, pretty good the second, and less so on successive reads. Not so, The Princess Bride. If anything, I think my considerable affection for this novel grows with each successive reading. And I’m still spotting new things! On this read, for the first time, I spotted the fake blurbs at the front of the Kindle edition. (One was from “Shog Bongiorno, professor emeritus, Mid-European Literature, Columbia University,” LOL.)

Twenty-fifth and thirtieth anniversary editions of The Princess Bride have contained new forwards that continue the story that Goldman uses as the novel’s framing device. And after the novel’s end, there is a lengthy introduction to a substantial sample of the novel’s fictitious sequel, Buttercup’s Baby. I’ve read it all except for Buttercup’s Baby. I can only read that for the first time once, and I’m just not ready to experience it yet. Besides, maybe one day Mr. Goldman will elbow out Stephen King for the job and will finish the abridgement of the sequel. Hope springs eternal. And isn’t that the nature of true love?

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Eric Revis

Classic novel

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on October 28, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a cult classic, but a classic nonetheless. I am an English teacher here in Japan and I used this with my upper intermediate students and, albeit slowly, we are progressing through the book and having fun doing it.

3 people found this helpful

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J. Ang

Spellbinding Metafiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 24, 2022

Verified Purchase

This is such an entertaining modern classic that I wonder how I had missed it all these years, despite its cult status as a novel and a film adaptation. In itself, the tale of a young farm boy Westley and his true love, the beautiful and initially haughty Buttercup, is an exciting and gripping coming-of-age adventure story, but it is the metatext holding it together that really wows me.

Besides these two very obvious and attractive leads, there is a trio of misfit assassins, the scheming Italian hunchback Vizzini, the lean and mean Spanish swordsman, Inigo, whose facial scars betray a traumatic past and a vengeful spirit, and a powerful giant wrestler Fezzik. Rounding out the cast of colourful characters is the villainous prince, Humperdinck. Straightforward enough, but is it really?

Without giving too much away, Goldman positions his novel as an abridged version of a much older text by S. Morgenstern, capturing all its “good parts,” and leaving out the tedious details of the ponderous original. Suffice to say that the reader would miss out on the full genius of the novel if he were to skip the introduction and the commentary (biographical editorial asides that seem to tell another story) by Goldman because they are integral to the overall work and act as a framing narrative, but the work is so much more than that. You need to read it to discover it for yourself.

Included in this 25th anniversary edition is the first chapter of a purported sequel, “Buttercup’s Baby,” which adds to the intrigue and mythology of the original text, and expands the metafictional universe of Goldman’s work. A wholly satisfying read.

3 people found this helpful

December Hare

Not movie or worse than the movie. Just different.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 28, 2021

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Better than the movie or worse than the movie? For those coming to this book, having seen the wonderful movie of the same name, I’d say that this book is different to the movie. Not that different, mind you. There’s still the The Dread Pirate/ Westley, Buttercup, Fezzik, Innigo and all the rest, there are still all the classic lines, “never get involved in a land war in Asia”, but instead, what you will hold in your hands is a kind of novel with a surrounding fictionalised author’s commentary, as he tells of his attempts to abridge and improve the original story by S. Morgernstern, whilst encountering budding starlets, publishing moguls and even the author Steven King. It is fast, and it is fun and only really flags a little towards the end, with Buttercups Tale, which carries on where the movie ends, and which, as others on here have pointed out, kinda succumbs to sequelitis and the Law of Diminishing Returns. Overall, lots of fun.

3 people found this helpful

Heidi

And I’m glad I went into the story completely blind

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 30, 2017

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This is such a cult classic story (both the book and the film) but I’ve been completely out of the loop until now. And I’m glad I went into the story completely blind.

At its heart we have a fun romp of a fantasy novel, and as the synopsis says it has a little bit of everything.

But for me it’s the way the story is presented which takes it to the next level. William Goldman claims to have take a beloved story from his childhood and edited it down to only the good bits, with brilliant commentary scattered throughout.

Overall this was a really fun read. And it’s about time I try out the movie!

15 people found this helpful

orkydd

I must be missing something here...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 1, 2021

Verified Purchase

I decided to read 'The Princess Bride' because, having not been hugely impressed with Rob Reiner's movie version, I thought, well, since it is an accepted truth that 'the book is always better than the film', then in its pages, the secret must lie. Sadly, I got no great joy. Just as I found the movie to be entertaining but not outstanding, so too did I find the written words telling the tangled tale of Buttercup and her Wesley to be merely satisfactory.

The Princess Bride, truth be told, is a rather silly book. But is quite well done as a ‘silly’ book, and of course contains at least two pop-culture catch phrases of high visibility. It is inconceivable that one does not recall Inigo Monteyo and his cry of revenge, not even if one is not quite certain of the meaning of that word.

It is also a meta fiction, as Goldman periodically throws open the 4th wall to maintain the fiction that he has abridged a story read to him by his father whilst the 10YO Goldman recovered from illness. Goldman of course has done the modern day reader the great service of excising great swaths of the original Morganstern, where the supposed author has indulged in flagrantly violating the edict of modern fiction to show, not tell. Goldman himself indulges in just such sins in the rather tedious and dull prefaces and afterwords which were part of the edition I read.

I wanted to like it more, but must conclude that I find it less than the sum of its parts.

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The Princess Bride (Ballantine Reader's Circle) Paperback – July 15, 2003

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Buy new:

$47.00

$3.99 delivery: June 16 - 23

Ships from: Cycle Book

Sold by: Cycle Book

Buy used:

$8.24