The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version is a 1973 fantasy romance novel by American writer William Goldman.

It is metafictionally presented as an abridgment of a longer work by the fictional S. Morgenstern, and Goldman's commentary asides are constant throughout.

The book was adapted into a 1987 feature film directed by Rob Reiner, starring Robin Wright and Cary Elwes.

William Goldman said, "I've gotten more responses on The Princess Bride than on everything else I've done put together—all kinds of strange outpouring letters.

"[1] When the original edition failed to sell well, the author and editor Spider Robinson convinced Goldman to let him excerpt the novel, namely the "Duel Scene", in the anthology The Best of All Possible Worlds (1980).

[4] The first section of the novel is Goldman talking about his own life, how he came to write the story, and how he found out that the supposed "historical tale" he had been told was actually just a "good parts" version he'd heard from his father.

Before the wedding, a trio of outlaws—the Sicilian criminal genius Vizzini, the Spaniard fencing master Inigo, and the enormous and mighty Turkish wrestler Fezzik—kidnaps Buttercup.

When the outlaws reach the top, Vizzini cuts the rope, but the man in black clings to the cliff face.

His conscience compelling him to fair play, Fezzik throws a rock as a warning to the man in black and challenges him to a wrestling match.

The man in black procures a vial of the deadly "iocane powder" and challenges the Sicilian to a Battle of the Wits.

The man in black taunts Buttercup, claiming that women cannot be trusted and that she must have felt nothing when her true love died.

Westley and Buttercup successfully navigate the Fire Swamp, but they are captured by Prince Humperdinck and his cruel six-fingered assistant, Count Tyrone Rugen.

Rugen follows Humperdinck's secret instructions not to release Westley but to take him to his underground hunting arena, the "Zoo of Death".

She expresses her unhappiness to Humperdinck, who proposes that he send ships to locate Westley, but that if they fail to find him, Buttercup will marry him.

On the day of the wedding, Fezzik finds Inigo reverted to his old habit of drunkeness, and he tells him that Count Rugen is the six-fingered man who killed his father.

Knowing Vizzini is dead, they seek out the man in black hoping that his wits will help them plan a successful attack on the castle.

This moves Goldman to abridge the book to a version resembling the one his father had read to him, while adding notes to summarize material he had "removed."

Morgenstern and the "original version" are fictitious and used as a literary device to comment on the nature of adaptation and to draw a contrast between the love and adventure of the main story and the mundane aspects of everyday life.

While Goldman did write the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969,[7] it is unclear if all the career references have a basis in truth.

Then, he wrote the second chapter, "The Groom", about the man she was going to marry; Goldman only managed to write four pages before running dry.

[13] He invites any reader who wants to read the "Reunion Scene" to write to the publisher (formerly Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; now Random House) and request a copy.

This website has since been taken down and superseded by the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt product page for the book, which provides the 2003 version of the Reunion Scene letter as a digital download.

The footnotes detail Goldman's visit to the fictional nation of Florin, which houses a popular museum devoted to the "real" story of The Princess Bride and contains such artifacts as Inigo's six-fingered sword.

In a January 2007 interview, Goldman admitted he was having difficulty coming up with ideas for the story:[17] MPM: I hear you're working on a sequel to The Princess Bride called Buttercup's Baby.

[18] The book was adapted into a 1987 feature film directed by Rob Reiner from a screenplay written by Goldman himself.

Several actors from the movie provided voices for their video game counterparts, including Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, Wallace Shawn as Vizzini, and Robin Wright as Buttercup.

[21] Sierra Online parodied the title of the novel in their computer game King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride.

[23] On September 13, 2020, the surviving members of the original cast participated in a live script reading that was a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

In 2023, Wizards of the Coast printed a Secret Lair drop featuring reworks of existing Magic: the Gathering cards as characters and situations from the film.