WriteIt is an extremely lightweight richtext editor for jQuery. It has a mild CSS dependency on the Bootstrap framework (that can easily be worked around by restyling the buttons).

This is a very no-nonsense plugin that simply makes use of execCommand by replacing the passed DOM node with an iframe.

Example of how to use WriteIt:

<textarea id="editor">Howdy, li'l lady.</textarea>
<script type="text/javascript">
    //initialize WriteIt
    var myEditor = $('#editor').writeit();
    
    //set text inside WriteIt
    myEditor.writeit('setText', 'titties');
    
    //get text inside WriteIt
    console.log(myEditor.writeit('getText'));
    
</script>