How much of the original book do adapted classics keep?
Adapted classics in the Oxford Bookworms Library, Penguin Readers and Black Cat are retold, not abridged: the story is rewritten in a limited vocabulary, so the plot and main characters stay but the author’s style is lost. They are also much shorter: the Oxford Bookworms Frankenstein has about an eighth as many words as Mary Shelley’s novel, and its Dracula about a twentieth of Bram Stoker’s.
Is an Oxford Bookworms book shorter than the original?
Yes, much shorter, and the lower the level, the shorter the book. At the levels most learners start with, an Oxford Bookworms or Penguin Readers adaptation of a classic novel is a twentieth to a fifth of the original’s length. Even the top Oxford Bookworms stage keeps only about a quarter. The table compares the publishers’ word counts for three classics with the free originals in our table of free books by level.
| Book and edition | Level, as stated | Headwords | Words | Share of the original |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frankenstein, Mary Shelley: the original | B2 (our rating) | — | 78,010 | 100% |
| Frankenstein, Penguin Readers Level 5 | B1 | 1,600 | 15,000–18,000 | 19–23% |
| Frankenstein, Oxford Bookworms Stage 3, retold by Patrick Nobes | B1 | 1,000 | 9,685 | 12% |
| Frankenstein, Dominoes (Oxford) Level 1, adapted by Bill Bowler | A1–A2 | — | 5,915 | 8% |
| Frankenstein, Black Cat Reading & Training, adapted by Maud Jackson | B2.2 (Step 5) | — | not stated | — |
| Dracula, Bram Stoker: the original | B2 (our rating) | — | 161,387 | 100% |
| Dracula, Penguin Readers Level 3 | A2 | 1,000 | 7,962 | 5% |
| Dracula, Oxford Bookworms Stage 2, retold by Diane Mowat | A2–B1 | 700 | 7,875 | 5% |
| Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen: the original | B2 (our rating) | — | 122,164 | 100% |
| Pride and Prejudice, Oxford Bookworms Stage 6, retold by Clare West | B2–C1 | 2,500 | 29,455 | 24% |
| Pride and Prejudice, Penguin Readers Level 4 | A2+ | 1,200 | 12,410 | 10% |
| Pride and Prejudice, Black Cat Reading & Training, adapted by Jennifer Gascoigne | B2.2 (Step 5) | — | not stated | — |
How we counted. Words, levels and headwords for the adaptations are the publishers’ own, from each book’s page; Oxford Bookworms headwords are from Oxford’s page for the series. For the Penguin Frankenstein, Penguin gives a range, 15,000–18,000 words, not an exact count, so the share is a range too. Black Cat prints no word count on its product pages; Frankenstein has 144 pages there and Pride and Prejudice 160, including activities. The originals were counted by our team from the text of the Standard Ebooks edition of each novel, without licence pages. Publishers may count slightly differently, so read the shares as rough figures. The CEFR level of each original was set by hand by our team, as explained on the About page.
The two Dracula retellings are the most compressed: Stoker’s novel is long, and both retellings are at A2 or A2–B1. The two Pride and Prejudice retellings show the other rule: the same novel can be retold at very different lengths. The Penguin Level 4 version, for A2+ learners, is under half the length of the Oxford Bookworms Stage 6 one. How the levels of these series line up with CEFR is on What are graded readers?
What is the difference between abridged, adapted and retold?
An abridged book keeps the author’s own sentences and cuts some of them. An adapted or retold book is rewritten, sentence by sentence, in simpler words and grammar. Graded readers of classics are almost always the second kind, whatever the cover says, because a level with 700 or 1,000 headwords cannot keep the author’s sentences.
The publishers’ own labels show how loosely the words are used:
- Oxford Bookworms Library credits each classic as “retold by”: Patrick Nobes for Frankenstein, Diane Mowat for Dracula, Clare West for Pride and Prejudice.
- Penguin Readers calls its series “carefully adapted” on its own site, while the Penguin Level 5 Frankenstein is listed as an “Abridged Edition” on penguin.co.uk.
- Black Cat credits its Reading & Training classics as adaptations, and the series runs in six steps from A2 to C1. Its separate Reading Classics series is described as classics “in original, unabridged versions, with notes and activities” for adults. Its Frankenstein there is labelled C1/C2 and uses Shelley’s revised text of 1831.
So “abridged” on a graded reader is not a promise that you are reading the author’s words. If you want the author’s text with help, look for an unabridged edition with notes, like Black Cat’s Reading Classics, or a parallel edition. If you want the story at your level, any of the retellings above will do, as long as the level fits.
There is also a middle kind. Paul Nation’s free Mid-frequency Readers take Project Gutenberg texts and make what their authors call “minor vocabulary adaptation”, at 4,000, 6,000 and 8,000 word families. They are meant to fill the gap between graded readers, which end around 3,000 word families, and unsimplified texts, which need about 8,000. They keep far more of the original than a graded reader does. None of our three classics is in the set, but Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are; links are on Where to find free graded readers.
What do you lose in an adaptation?
Mostly three things: the author’s sentences, most of the text, and most of the vocabulary. The main plot and the main characters stay, and the publishers’ summaries of their retellings follow the original story. We have not compared these retellings with the originals line by line, and the publishers do not list what they cut. What follows is what their own length and level rules make unavoidable.
The author’s sentences. A retelling is new prose by the reteller. Frankenstein opens with a letter: “You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.” A version at 1,000 headwords has to replace words like commencement and forebodings. Penguin also limits grammar by level: sentences of up to three clauses at Level 3 and up to four at Level 5. Austen’s irony, Shelley’s long sentences and the voices of Stoker’s diarists all sit in exactly the words and sentences that a retelling has to replace.
Most of the text. At 5% to 24% of the original’s length, nearly every scene is shortened and much of the description, dialogue and minor detail cannot fit. The higher the level, the more survives: the Oxford Bookworms Stage 6 Pride and Prejudice keeps about a quarter of Austen’s word count, the Penguin Level 3 Dracula about a twentieth of Stoker’s.
The vocabulary. The Oxford Bookworms Frankenstein keeps to 1,000 headwords. Shelley’s novel has 7,282 different word forms by our count. The two measures are not the same (one headword covers “walk”, “walks” and “walked”; our count treats them as three), but the gap is wide. That gap is the point of a graded reader. Paul Nation found that a reader who knows the 3,000 most frequent English word families, plus the characters’ names, knows 98.86% of the words in an Oxford Bookworms retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray at 1,000 headwords. For an ordinary novel, 98% takes 8,000 to 9,000 word families, plus names.
So what you give up in style and detail, you get back as a book you can read at speed without stopping. Whether that trade is worth it at your level is the question on Graded readers or original books?
Should you read the adaptation before the original?
Read the adaptation first if the original is too hard for you today. If the original already passes a one-page test, read the original. The test: read one page from the middle and count the words you don’t know. On a page of about 250 words, five unknown words means you know about 98% of them, the level that Hu and Nation’s study of reading fiction pointed to. How to run the test is on Is this book right for my level?
What reading the adaptation first gives you:
- The plot, in advance. When you later read the original, you can follow the story where the words run out. The cost is suspense, which matters less for Frankenstein and Dracula, whose stories most readers half know already.
- The main names and relationships. These are often the hard part in the first chapters of a long novel such as Pride and Prejudice.
- A finished book. A retelling at 5,000 to 30,000 words can be read in days. The original Dracula runs to 161,387 words.
Choose the adaptation by your level, not by the title. Pride and Prejudice exists at Penguin Readers Level 4 (A2+) and at Oxford Bookworms Stage 6 (B2–C1), and those are very different books. If you are at B2, think twice before buying a retelling at all. Our team rates the originals of Frankenstein, Dracula and Pride and Prejudice at B2, B2 and B2, and even the Stage 6 Pride and Prejudice drops about three quarters of Austen’s words. At that level, the original with a dictionary often works better: see Reading with a dictionary.
All three originals are in the public domain and free. Each book’s page has its level, length, reading time and a link to the free edition: Frankenstein, Dracula and Pride and Prejudice. Free adapted classics also exist, among them Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn from the US State Department, listed on Where to find free graded readers.
Sources
- Oxford University Press Spain. Book pages for Oxford Bookworms Library Frankenstein (Stage 3, retold by Patrick Nobes), Dracula (Stage 2, retold by Diane Mowat) and Pride and Prejudice (Stage 6, retold by Clare West), and for Dominoes Frankenstein (Level 1, adapted by Bill Bowler): word count and CEFR level, checked 31 October 2026. Frankenstein, Dracula, Pride and Prejudice, Dominoes Frankenstein
- Oxford University Press Spain. Oxford Bookworms Library: stages, headwords and CEFR levels, checked 31 October 2026. oup.es/oxfordbookwormslibrary
- Penguin Random House. Penguin Readers pages for Frankenstein (Level 5), Dracula (Level 3) and Pride and Prejudice (Level 4): CEFR level, headwords, story word count and sentence length; and penguin.co.uk listing of Penguin Readers Level 5: Frankenstein as an “Abridged Edition” with “carefully adapted text”, checked 31 October 2026. Frankenstein, Dracula, Pride and Prejudice, penguin.co.uk
- Black Cat (CIDEB). About us: series and levels; Reading & Training pages for Frankenstein (adapted by Maud Jackson) and Pride and Prejudice (adapted by Jennifer Gascoigne), both B2.2; Reading Classics Frankenstein, checked 31 October 2026. About us, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, Reading Classics Frankenstein
- Standard Ebooks. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; words and different word forms counted by our team. Frankenstein, Dracula, Pride and Prejudice
- Nation, P. and Anthony, L. (2013). Mid-frequency readers. Journal of Extensive Reading, 1, 5–16, checked 31 October 2026. jalt-publications.org
- Paul Nation’s resources, Victoria University of Wellington: graded readers and Mid-frequency Readers, checked 31 October 2026. wgtn.ac.nz
- Nation, I. S. P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? The Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59–82. doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.63.1.59
- Hu, M. and Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403–430. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66973