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Bibliothèque de la Pléiade | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4915 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 2 of 3 17 August 2013 at 1:48pm | IP Logged |
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Two publishers of high quality editions in English are:
The Folio Society Everyman's Library In my opinion, Folio Society books are often found on people's bookshelves, but rarely read. My local Oxfam has loads of them (again, all clearly unread). They seem to focus on the "greats" which everybody thinks they should have, but nobody bothers to read unless forced to. The Folio Society editions are slip cased, and have the artwork of the first edition. I personally prefer the work of Everyman's Library, which includes great works of literature, philosophy and religion. The Everyman novels often have introduction by other well-known authors, which make them the edition to have. For example, Alexander McCall Smith wrote the introduction to the collection of RK Narayan stories I have, and if I remember right, Anita Desai wrote the introduction to Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. Since 2000 Everyman's Library have been reprinting all of the books of PG Woodhouse, all in reasonably priced high-quality hardcovers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5267 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 3 of 3 21 September 2013 at 3:53am | IP Logged |
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Three come to my mind right now:
For the USA: Library of America For Germany: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag For Spain: Biblioteca Clásica de la Real Academia Española A difference between those and the French series is that the above three only offer literary classics of their own country, while the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade also includes many works of world literature in French translation. I think the Bibliothèque has been the inspiration for launching all those other series. The Library of America is wonderful, the paper and binding are extremely durable and you get them at mid-price. The editing is top-notch, and yet there is not too much scholarly annotation as to frighten you off. There are some 'gaps' in the assortment since they didn't get the required permission from the copyright holders of a few famous authors including Hemingway. Unlike the other two series the LoA offers a variety of different kinds of material - apart from literature also journalistic work, autobiographical narratives, political writings, many anthologies, collections of song lyrics and so on. Some of their publications are the best available (e.g. the volume with the collected writings of Robert Frost). The German series is way too expensive, but for a couple of years now they continue to bring out many of the individual volumes as affordable and unabridged paperbacks too. The Spanish series is new with only a couple of published volumes so far and will stop with works published around 1900 or so. These series feature a lot of obscure medieval German and Spanish works and an increasing amount of little-known modern American authors. I would call them "national libraries" rather than representative Great Books selections. Bound library-style books are not always the best choice though. If you want the best and most useful edition you can think of for "Oliver Twist" or "The Canterbury Tales", buy a Penguin Classics paperback. Everything - the newly edited text, the notes, the introduction, glossaries etc. are absolutely superb. It can't get better than that. Unfortunately they are using rather thin paper for the binding now which sooner or later will result in a creased spine. In the USA there is also the "Norton Critical Edition". These are great-looking colorful quality paperbacks in a somewhat large format which are offered at a modest price. The special thing about them is that apart from the main text and commentary they tend to have an overload of additional material, especially large selections of literary criticism and related stuff. But this is more like a welcome bonus that doesn't distract from the work itself, and in some cases there are some real nuggets in there. Here again some individual volumes are the best ones out there - their edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" may be the most complete available (1000 large pages in very small print for $20), while H.G. Well's "The Time Machine" includes all the early essays, drafts, alternate passages, prefaces, letters etc. that Wells wrote, plus a selection of contemporary criticism and the like. In that case very welcome, and for just $11. You won't get that anywhere else. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" includes not one, but both book versions, the anthology of Keats interweaves poems and letters in chronological order, Malory's "Le Morte Darthur" is based on the manuscript, makes use of special fonts trying to recreate the impression you would get reading from old script, retaining the original Middle English spelling, book has 1000 pages, an associated website as online companion - all for $14. Etc. etc. -- There are many gems in this series, which also has some non-English world classics in translation. As Jeffers just mentioned, there is also the UK-based Everyman's Library. I have their edition of Hemingway's "The Collected Stories", which may not be a big seller but which is more reliable and with a greater selection of stories than the popular Finca Vigía US anthology. Finally I want to mention the Ediciones conmemorativas de la Real Academia Española. These are commemorative editions of Spanish-language literary classics or authors, they bring out a new volume every two years or so, six volumes so far, of which five are by 20th century Latin American writers, plus the unavoidable Don Quijote. The books are hardcovers, look great, are surprisingly cheap, and in addition to the main text there is some nice additional material including eulogies by other famous authors; in the case of Don Quijote some articles on the language, notes and a glossary on archaic Spanish words - this is the popular edition of the authorative 2 vol. scholarly edition edited by Francisco Rico. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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