Would you be willing to share or do a post on your publishers who do classics reprints? I have a few that I follow casually (McNally Editions comes to mind) but I'm always interested in more as another reading list fan
Ooooh, okay, well here is my informal list. Some of them I have no idea what I was thinking (Drawn and Quarterly isn't a classics reprint press, it publishes new graphic novels) but I am keeping it as is anyway:
Virago
Northwestern University - European classics
Norton
Penguin Classics
Oxford World Classics
NYRB
Persephone Books
Library of America
Vintage
Cambridge Classics of Philosophy
Dumbarton Oaks (for Byzantine and Anglo Saxon classics)
On Scott: it's always fascinating who makes it and who doesn't in the long run-I read Alfred Kazin's On Native Ground last year and thought "who are these people!" for about half the book! I really admire you, I'm terrible at reading lists, the last time I tried to follow one was for American postmodern novels and I gave up because it was too much of the same thing one after another (I have since read many of the list books anyway.) And yes, we should all read for pleasure (it's why I'm bad at following lists!)
Oh I have such a taste for forgotten authors. Especially the popular fiction of yore. A lot of it is surprisingly to my taste. As I remarked on Pistelli's blog, I tend to enjoy the middlebrow fiction of the past! Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, John O'Hara, Ann Petrie, Richard Wright's NATIVE SON--I like them all. Just great storytellers writing great social novels. Any author whose name is still extant in any sense at all is still probably in the top 5 percent!
I guess Walter Scott's time could come again if Scotland ever becomes independent. Barring that, I think he's out. Judging by Baldwin's 1912 list, below, of essential novels I think it was really the russians that knocked him off. Once the idea of reading the Russians in translation became acceptable, you don't need Walter Scott anymore.
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. “‘Robinson Crusoe’ contains (not for boys, but for men) more religion, more philosophy, more psychology, more political economy, more anthropology, than are found in many elaborate treatises on these special subjects.”—F. Harrison.
Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Cervantes. “The work of Cervantes is the greatest in the world after Homer’s Iliad, speaking of it, I mean, as a work of entertainment.”—Dr. Johnson.
Gulliver’s Travels, by Dean Swift. “Not so indispensable, but yet the having him is much to be rejoiced in.”—R. Chambers.
The Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith. “The blotting out of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ from most minds, would be more grievous than to know that the island of Borneo had sunk in the sea.”—Ibid.
The Waverley Novels. If not all, at least the following: Ivanhoe; The Talisman; Kenilworth; The Monastery; The Abbot; Old Mortality; The Antiquary; Guy Mannering; The Bride of Lammermoor; The Heart of Midlothian.
Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales.
Dickens’s Novels. Not all, but the following: David Copperfield; Dombey and Son; Nicholas Nickleby; Old Curiosity Shop; Oliver Twist; and The Pickwick Papers.
Thackeray’s Novels. Vanity Fair; Pendennis; The Newcomes; The Virginians; Henry Esmond.
George Eliot’s Novels. Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Romola; Middlemarch; Daniel Deronda.
Corinne, by Madame de Staël.
Telemachus, by Fénelon. (Hawkesworth’s translation.)
Tom Jones, by Fielding. “We read his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers and fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet.”—H. A. Taine.
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, by Goethe. (Carlyle’s translation.)
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Novels. The Scarlet Letter; The Marble Faun; The Blithedale Romance; The House of Seven Gables.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.
Hypatia and Alton Locke, by Charles Kingsley.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Mrs. Stowe. “We have seen an American woman write a novel of which a million copies were sold in all languages, and which had one merit, of speaking to the universal heart, and was read with equal interest to three audiences, namely, in the parlor, in the kitchen, and in the nursery of every house.”—Emerson.
Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain.
Bulwer-Lytton’s Novels. The Caxtons; My Novel; Zanoni; The Last of the Barons; Harold; The Last Days of Pompeii.
He's not exactly forgotten as much as diminished, but my main takeaway from Native Ground was to check out Dos Passos, who is one of my favorites without necessarily being the easiest to read.
Compared to what he was 100 years ago, he's forgotten! But yes, at least we know the name. It's like if in 100 years Hemingway was just some dude some people had heard of. I too like Dos Passos! Though admittedly I am more in love with the tricks and techniques than the stories themselves--he had a huge influence on science fiction, via John Brunner, and now lots of sci-fi writers use Dos Passosian pastiche techniques without even knowing where they came from!
Would you be willing to share or do a post on your publishers who do classics reprints? I have a few that I follow casually (McNally Editions comes to mind) but I'm always interested in more as another reading list fan
Ooooh, okay, well here is my informal list. Some of them I have no idea what I was thinking (Drawn and Quarterly isn't a classics reprint press, it publishes new graphic novels) but I am keeping it as is anyway:
Virago
Northwestern University - European classics
Norton
Penguin Classics
Oxford World Classics
NYRB
Persephone Books
Library of America
Vintage
Cambridge Classics of Philosophy
Dumbarton Oaks (for Byzantine and Anglo Saxon classics)
Loeb Classical Library
Collins classics
Pushkin press
Dalkey archive
British library
Modern library
Valancourt
Europa
Melville House - Neversink
FSG classics
METS (for Middle English and Anglo-Norman texts)
Macmillan collectors library
Two lines press
Dorothy project
Drawn and quarterly
And other stories
New directions
Seven stories press
Hackett classics
Alma classics
Broad view editions
Boiler house press
Open letter press
Sublunary editions - empyrean
On Scott: it's always fascinating who makes it and who doesn't in the long run-I read Alfred Kazin's On Native Ground last year and thought "who are these people!" for about half the book! I really admire you, I'm terrible at reading lists, the last time I tried to follow one was for American postmodern novels and I gave up because it was too much of the same thing one after another (I have since read many of the list books anyway.) And yes, we should all read for pleasure (it's why I'm bad at following lists!)
Oh I have such a taste for forgotten authors. Especially the popular fiction of yore. A lot of it is surprisingly to my taste. As I remarked on Pistelli's blog, I tend to enjoy the middlebrow fiction of the past! Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, John O'Hara, Ann Petrie, Richard Wright's NATIVE SON--I like them all. Just great storytellers writing great social novels. Any author whose name is still extant in any sense at all is still probably in the top 5 percent!
I guess Walter Scott's time could come again if Scotland ever becomes independent. Barring that, I think he's out. Judging by Baldwin's 1912 list, below, of essential novels I think it was really the russians that knocked him off. Once the idea of reading the Russians in translation became acceptable, you don't need Walter Scott anymore.
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. “‘Robinson Crusoe’ contains (not for boys, but for men) more religion, more philosophy, more psychology, more political economy, more anthropology, than are found in many elaborate treatises on these special subjects.”—F. Harrison.
Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Cervantes. “The work of Cervantes is the greatest in the world after Homer’s Iliad, speaking of it, I mean, as a work of entertainment.”—Dr. Johnson.
Gulliver’s Travels, by Dean Swift. “Not so indispensable, but yet the having him is much to be rejoiced in.”—R. Chambers.
The Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith. “The blotting out of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ from most minds, would be more grievous than to know that the island of Borneo had sunk in the sea.”—Ibid.
The Waverley Novels. If not all, at least the following: Ivanhoe; The Talisman; Kenilworth; The Monastery; The Abbot; Old Mortality; The Antiquary; Guy Mannering; The Bride of Lammermoor; The Heart of Midlothian.
Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales.
Dickens’s Novels. Not all, but the following: David Copperfield; Dombey and Son; Nicholas Nickleby; Old Curiosity Shop; Oliver Twist; and The Pickwick Papers.
Thackeray’s Novels. Vanity Fair; Pendennis; The Newcomes; The Virginians; Henry Esmond.
George Eliot’s Novels. Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Romola; Middlemarch; Daniel Deronda.
Corinne, by Madame de Staël.
Telemachus, by Fénelon. (Hawkesworth’s translation.)
Tom Jones, by Fielding. “We read his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rough wine, which cheers and fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet.”—H. A. Taine.
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, by Goethe. (Carlyle’s translation.)
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Novels. The Scarlet Letter; The Marble Faun; The Blithedale Romance; The House of Seven Gables.
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.
Hypatia and Alton Locke, by Charles Kingsley.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Mrs. Stowe. “We have seen an American woman write a novel of which a million copies were sold in all languages, and which had one merit, of speaking to the universal heart, and was read with equal interest to three audiences, namely, in the parlor, in the kitchen, and in the nursery of every house.”—Emerson.
Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain.
Bulwer-Lytton’s Novels. The Caxtons; My Novel; Zanoni; The Last of the Barons; Harold; The Last Days of Pompeii.
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë.
John Halifax, Gentleman, by Mrs. Craik.
He's not exactly forgotten as much as diminished, but my main takeaway from Native Ground was to check out Dos Passos, who is one of my favorites without necessarily being the easiest to read.
Compared to what he was 100 years ago, he's forgotten! But yes, at least we know the name. It's like if in 100 years Hemingway was just some dude some people had heard of. I too like Dos Passos! Though admittedly I am more in love with the tricks and techniques than the stories themselves--he had a huge influence on science fiction, via John Brunner, and now lots of sci-fi writers use Dos Passosian pastiche techniques without even knowing where they came from!