Standard Ebooks is pretty much my go-to for classic literature (which fortunately now includes more and more P.G.Wodehouse with each passing year). They do still have the caveat of being mostly in English and, necessarily, their translations from non-English sources are also old. That said, I thought their edition of Don Quixote was pretty decent - it uses the Ormsby translation from 1885 and includes all of his (quite extensive) footnotes.
For Shakespeare, I have found Bantam Classics (usually edited & introduced by David Bevington, who is fantastic) to be reliable, inexpensive, and pretty good on Kindle.
This is a really helpful walkthrough! I buy most of my books from ThriftBooks these days, so having a guide to publishers when I'm trying to pick between editions will help me narrow down which to buy.
For traditional classics, I alternate between Penguin and Oxford because they are widely available, and usually have good front matter and decent notes. (Almost always endnotes, alas -- I am a paper reader by preference (or audio) so I really would like footnotes, but ...)
Isaac is completely right about Dover! Ugly books, poorly bound, no introductory material, and the copy is often reproduced from previous editions, sometimes poorly. (I have an edition of Trollope's THE CLAVERINGS from them and they reproduced magazine pages, I think -- which is kind of fun in some ways (illustrations!) but very hard to read when a A1 sized magazine page is reduced to typical trade paperback size. Wordworth Classics -- possibly defunct -- used to do mass market paperback editions that were also kind of shabby.
I first read MIDDLEMARCH in an edition from Barnes and Noble -- I think they called it Barnes and Noble Classics. It was terrible! Slapdash introduction. And the text was very obviously set from a OCR reproduction of another edition -- rife with typical OCR errors. I got rid of it and bought an Oxford or Penguin edition as soon as I could.
I like Virago because they publish books by women that were forgotten, and some really great writers (Rebecca West! Elizabeth Taylor!) They used to be reprinted in the US by the Dial Press, but I think they might be sold directly in the US now?
I have a soft spot for The Dorothy Project partly because they are local to me -- I could probably go knock on their door and they might answer! But I think your description of them is fair.
And I love the Dalkey Archive Press for two main reasons -- one, I am a huge fan of Flann O'Brien, who was as their name makes clear the original reason for their existence; and two, they published a complete in one volume edition of the novels of another personal favorite, W. M. Spackman.
And, finally -- Library of America. Nice looking books, good selection. But the paper is so thin! I have some and am glad to, but I'm afraid to read them. For example, I have three editions of Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems. A reading copy at work that is literally falling apart. A reading copy at home that is in better shape (because much newer.) And the LOA edition, which includes a lot of extra stuff, such as poems he repudiated, and some prose. But I hardly ever touch that one.
Thanks for replying. I didn't know you were in St. Louis! It seems like everyone is in STL these days! For some reason I always thought you were in England.
My personal soft spot for Dalkey comes from David Markson. They were his original publisher! He got 52 rejections for Wittgenstein's Mistress before they agreed to publish. They also kept The Recognitions in print, as I recall. They're fantastic.
This is such a detailed analysis! My preference so far is for Penguin Classics mainly because of their availability and affordability in India. We also have locally available classics editions from a few publishers like Rupa Publication and Fingerprint classics. Their catalogue is not that good but you can choose from them if the Penguin edition is not available. I especially love the paper quality of Rupa Classics.
What a wonderful post. I have such happy memories of reading these imprints back when I was a little more time rich, and hope to return to them again, as they have obviously been busy publishing some great looking works. My only comment is that to judge by Kindle publications is to miss the tactile feel of many of the presses, which has always been important to me.
That's true. I do feel a bit bad about missing that aspect. Some of these presses publish in mass-market paperback too, which I think is kind of nice, and I'd like to give them credit for that. If I was younger and in a different place in life and had different reading habits, my evaluations would probably be a bit different.
If you like Hard Case Crime, you should check out Stark House, which also reprints a lot of mid-twentieth century crime novels. Sorry your crime novel got turned down, I bet I would have enjoyed it.
This is a great service that I will refer back to often, thank you! I’m always impressed by the amount and quality of supplemental material in Norton Critical Editions. My impression was that’s the main purpose, and also why they’re expensive. That’s probably what you meant by saying they’re mostly intended for classroom use, but the number of essays presented after the text on a wide variety of topics related to the main work is unique in my experience. If I want to read The Sound and the Fury, I have a lot of options. But the Norton also has multiple supplemental materials written by Faulkner, multiple interviews with Faulkner, and about 20 critical essays by Sartre, Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Ellison, etc. I don’t want to read materials like that for every classic, but for favorite authors or other works I want to go deep on they’re great.
Well said. I agree. Norton Critical Editions are fantastic. Just chock full of additional resources, essays, reviews, letters, footnotes etc, as you say. The formatting of the actual text can be a bit unlovely (small cramped text) but that’s a minor quibble.
Oh shoot McNally, and I've even read one of their books! Haven't read enough to make a judgement about their quality but I think I'm getting so many new suggestions I'm gonna add a new section that includes them
Archipelago is mostly books that "forgotten" in the sense that they're not originally written in English, but lots of non-English-lit classics. You might want to check them out if you haven't before :)
I disagree with the criticism of Hackett though. Their translations are generally good and the affordability of the volumes is a big deal. I’m involved in a monthly philosophy reading club and I rejoice when I see a Hackett version of a text because I know that means it’s accessible for our group.
For philosophical translations, I generally advocate going with the translator rather than the imprint. The Hackett version of Critique of Pure Reason, for example, is both reliable and arguably more readable than the Cambridge version for a non specialist. Hackett has published significant writings by the small group of English language Chinese philosophy scholars in recent years, for example: the two volume anthology edited by Van Norden and his very very valuable language primer Classical Chinese for Everyone; Ziporyn’s excellent translations of the Zhuangzi; Ivanhoe’s translation of the Dao De Jing (including a very valuable appendix on the ambiguity of the Chinese).
Also, a non-specialist who wants to understand philosophy could do worse than reading through Hackett’s catalogue. The books they select are reliably worth reading for anyone interested in philosophy. Cambridge publishes a lot of texts that would be useful for specialists but that should probably be much lower priority for general readers. I think Hackett is great.
But I’m still glad I read this. I learned about a bunch of publishers I should probably read.
I'll add to the defense of Hackett--I assign them a lot because they are the cheapest alternative outside the Dover thrift editions, which generally don't have any apparatus and often use really old-fashioned translations.
As an ex-philosophy professor, I would agree, and flag that Hackett has a substantive breadth of great philosophical texts, with often very good translations - much more consistently than penguin or oxford world classics (although the latter is catching up). Cambridge has published a lot of classic philosophy in the last few years, but these are often quite expensive volumes.
Hi Ethan. I'm the Publisher at Hackett and really appreciate your remarks! Naomi, I'm sorry if you haven't had a good experience with Hackett editions in the past. We do indeed aim primarily for student use, but what you describe as "low effort" is actually the product of significant work, wherein we do our best to ensure we are able to publish books that are both affordable and of high quality. Our typically simple designs, the translations we commission, what kind of apparatus we include -- more or less, scholarly or pedagogical – are all determined by the needs of our intended audience, which is mainly undergraduates in philosophy and classics, though also in history, literature, languages and other subjects in the humanities. If you ask around, I think you’ll find we generally have a strong reputation amongst our core community. That said, what we offer certainly isn’t right for every context, and I understand that it may not be best option given what you’re looking for. Thanks for this piece, and for your work more generally!
Thank you for this really thoughtful reply. My opinion of Hackett has been duly increased, and next week I'll note that I think I wasn't totally fair. I think my judgement of Hackett is the one that's aroused the most pushback, and that's definitely something that's worth noting.
My only issue with the Oxford World Classics--and this is an issue only caused because I buy old used paper editions--is that the ink on the pages tends to smudge very easily. If I rub a sweaty thumb with a little pressure on the surface of the page, the ink tends to smear. Everyman's Library and Library of America have better ink and paper, although the Library of America pages are a little thin for my taste.
I was surprised, also, not to see Dover Thrift Editions on your list. For my money they are the worst, least-attractively-typeset, most difficult-to-read books, and they have no prefatory material to speak of. (I found their version of Leaves of Grass nearly unreadable because the letters were so small and the pages looked so cramped.) Then again, they are in some sense doing God's work; you can buy a brand-new paper copy of many classic novels for $3, which is sort of an unbelievable price point, which makes them useful to assign to students who don't have much money and can't afford better editions. I spent many hours with my nose in Dover Thrift Editions in my undergraduate years.
I am definitely getting the sense that if I read more paper books my preferences would be different! With Dover, I don't know if they even have ebooks, but that's not really a focus of theirs anyways so it seems unfair to knock them for it. In their case I just really don't have enough experience with their books to be able to comment.
Dover is great for Russian classics for anyone partial to Constance Garnett (I am), also I prefer their cheap paper to whatever Penguin is using these days
Oh interesting--I haven't noticed bad paper on Penguins. (Nor am I erudite enough to really discern between translations.) The last book I got from Penguin, a copy of War and Peace, had pretty nice paper--smooth, no ink smudging, not too thin. But the issue I tend to have with Dover is not so much the ink or paper quality but the typesetting and design--the lines are so close together and so long, and the margins on the page so small, that I find them difficult. I had no idea I had so many strong preferences about these things until I started typing them out...
I think I'm complaining about good paper on the Penguins, rather than bad, it seems overbleached, maybe. whereas the Dovers, probably they don't actually smudge, but you get the feeling that they might, and I love that
I have a vintage paperback 12-volume set of Lang’s Rainbow Fairy Books by Dover Thrift Editions that I really like and will hang onto because DTE’s books are, like everything else, getting more expensive.
I’m a fan of Melville `house and NYRB classics myself. Mostly because of their titles. I love the Melville House novella series. Their translation of Turgenev’s First Love is the best I’ve read so far.
NYRB classics, yes we read them because we trust them but for good reason. I discovered HONG KONG writer Eileen Chang through them and I couldn’t put it down.
If you’re expanding beyond us publishers, Fitzcarraldo Press wins hands down for me.
The two big Russian couple who are translating all the big ones like Tolstoy etc are not touching Turgenev . I can’t remember who did the Melville house one, but a friend of mine actually gave me another translation just before I moved to Paris, which I haven’t read yet, but I would say the Melville house and this new book that I required a probably the newest translations. Definitely try for the Melville house. Don’t read Constantine Garnett
90s-era Penguin Classics will always be my sentimental favorite, writing their back-of-book blurbs was always my dream job growing up. I am very intrigued by those cloth-bound coffee tables books you mention. Glad to see a mention of the Loeb Classical Library, if I ever get out of my tiny bohemian hovel in NYC and have the space for a proper library I just might have to invest in that entire series.
I just got a Loeb in the mail today and was thinking of posting a photo of a page of it as a comment here because the quality of the printing is so poor! This has been a problem for me before with them but my impressionistic sense is that it's getting worse. Really unfortunate as they're very useful to have around.
I am awfully sorry to hear that! The only Loeb I ever owned was a handsome copy of the Anabasis that was well-crafted. They need to be careful, given the obscurity of a lot of their titles the sense of high-class craftsmanship is a lot of what they're selling. Bad printing undermines the premise of their brand.
Given your comments on Project Gutenberg, I think you might like Standard Ebooks: standardebooks.org
Great rec. Thank you. I've already started using them!
I just checked these guys out and WOW is it amazing!!!
Standard Ebooks is pretty much my go-to for classic literature (which fortunately now includes more and more P.G.Wodehouse with each passing year). They do still have the caveat of being mostly in English and, necessarily, their translations from non-English sources are also old. That said, I thought their edition of Don Quixote was pretty decent - it uses the Ormsby translation from 1885 and includes all of his (quite extensive) footnotes.
Excellent recommendation. I've been using them for the past week to look into Melville.
This is fabulous, Naomi..a million thanks!!
Very small/niche, but with a surprising percentage of "keepers", for those who are interested and have more time than I, is Galley Beggar Press
https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/about
For Shakespeare, I have found Bantam Classics (usually edited & introduced by David Bevington, who is fantastic) to be reliable, inexpensive, and pretty good on Kindle.
Thanks for the rec!
The best edition of a classic is the one I can get for free from the library.
This is a really helpful walkthrough! I buy most of my books from ThriftBooks these days, so having a guide to publishers when I'm trying to pick between editions will help me narrow down which to buy.
Yessss...that is my aim. Like, it's very hard to really comparison shop. With the classics, you oftentimes just want a brand name you can rely on.
For traditional classics, I alternate between Penguin and Oxford because they are widely available, and usually have good front matter and decent notes. (Almost always endnotes, alas -- I am a paper reader by preference (or audio) so I really would like footnotes, but ...)
Isaac is completely right about Dover! Ugly books, poorly bound, no introductory material, and the copy is often reproduced from previous editions, sometimes poorly. (I have an edition of Trollope's THE CLAVERINGS from them and they reproduced magazine pages, I think -- which is kind of fun in some ways (illustrations!) but very hard to read when a A1 sized magazine page is reduced to typical trade paperback size. Wordworth Classics -- possibly defunct -- used to do mass market paperback editions that were also kind of shabby.
I first read MIDDLEMARCH in an edition from Barnes and Noble -- I think they called it Barnes and Noble Classics. It was terrible! Slapdash introduction. And the text was very obviously set from a OCR reproduction of another edition -- rife with typical OCR errors. I got rid of it and bought an Oxford or Penguin edition as soon as I could.
I like Virago because they publish books by women that were forgotten, and some really great writers (Rebecca West! Elizabeth Taylor!) They used to be reprinted in the US by the Dial Press, but I think they might be sold directly in the US now?
I have a soft spot for The Dorothy Project partly because they are local to me -- I could probably go knock on their door and they might answer! But I think your description of them is fair.
And I love the Dalkey Archive Press for two main reasons -- one, I am a huge fan of Flann O'Brien, who was as their name makes clear the original reason for their existence; and two, they published a complete in one volume edition of the novels of another personal favorite, W. M. Spackman.
And, finally -- Library of America. Nice looking books, good selection. But the paper is so thin! I have some and am glad to, but I'm afraid to read them. For example, I have three editions of Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems. A reading copy at work that is literally falling apart. A reading copy at home that is in better shape (because much newer.) And the LOA edition, which includes a lot of extra stuff, such as poems he repudiated, and some prose. But I hardly ever touch that one.
Thanks for replying. I didn't know you were in St. Louis! It seems like everyone is in STL these days! For some reason I always thought you were in England.
My personal soft spot for Dalkey comes from David Markson. They were his original publisher! He got 52 rejections for Wittgenstein's Mistress before they agreed to publish. They also kept The Recognitions in print, as I recall. They're fantastic.
This is such a detailed analysis! My preference so far is for Penguin Classics mainly because of their availability and affordability in India. We also have locally available classics editions from a few publishers like Rupa Publication and Fingerprint classics. Their catalogue is not that good but you can choose from them if the Penguin edition is not available. I especially love the paper quality of Rupa Classics.
Yay, thanks for letting me know about these
Congratulations on being listed today in The Browser. You got a new subscriber from me. Looking forward to catching up.
What a wonderful post. I have such happy memories of reading these imprints back when I was a little more time rich, and hope to return to them again, as they have obviously been busy publishing some great looking works. My only comment is that to judge by Kindle publications is to miss the tactile feel of many of the presses, which has always been important to me.
That's true. I do feel a bit bad about missing that aspect. Some of these presses publish in mass-market paperback too, which I think is kind of nice, and I'd like to give them credit for that. If I was younger and in a different place in life and had different reading habits, my evaluations would probably be a bit different.
If you like Hard Case Crime, you should check out Stark House, which also reprints a lot of mid-twentieth century crime novels. Sorry your crime novel got turned down, I bet I would have enjoyed it.
Thanks! This is a good rec =]
This is a great service that I will refer back to often, thank you! I’m always impressed by the amount and quality of supplemental material in Norton Critical Editions. My impression was that’s the main purpose, and also why they’re expensive. That’s probably what you meant by saying they’re mostly intended for classroom use, but the number of essays presented after the text on a wide variety of topics related to the main work is unique in my experience. If I want to read The Sound and the Fury, I have a lot of options. But the Norton also has multiple supplemental materials written by Faulkner, multiple interviews with Faulkner, and about 20 critical essays by Sartre, Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Ellison, etc. I don’t want to read materials like that for every classic, but for favorite authors or other works I want to go deep on they’re great.
Well said. I agree. Norton Critical Editions are fantastic. Just chock full of additional resources, essays, reviews, letters, footnotes etc, as you say. The formatting of the actual text can be a bit unlovely (small cramped text) but that’s a minor quibble.
I know right! They are incredible. So much better than they have to be. It’s really thoughtful, the effort they put in.
For "forgotten classics", there's also McNally and Archipelago (or at least, IMO I'd have added those).
Oh shoot McNally, and I've even read one of their books! Haven't read enough to make a judgement about their quality but I think I'm getting so many new suggestions I'm gonna add a new section that includes them
Archipelago is mostly books that "forgotten" in the sense that they're not originally written in English, but lots of non-English-lit classics. You might want to check them out if you haven't before :)
This is a great and useful list!
I disagree with the criticism of Hackett though. Their translations are generally good and the affordability of the volumes is a big deal. I’m involved in a monthly philosophy reading club and I rejoice when I see a Hackett version of a text because I know that means it’s accessible for our group.
For philosophical translations, I generally advocate going with the translator rather than the imprint. The Hackett version of Critique of Pure Reason, for example, is both reliable and arguably more readable than the Cambridge version for a non specialist. Hackett has published significant writings by the small group of English language Chinese philosophy scholars in recent years, for example: the two volume anthology edited by Van Norden and his very very valuable language primer Classical Chinese for Everyone; Ziporyn’s excellent translations of the Zhuangzi; Ivanhoe’s translation of the Dao De Jing (including a very valuable appendix on the ambiguity of the Chinese).
Also, a non-specialist who wants to understand philosophy could do worse than reading through Hackett’s catalogue. The books they select are reliably worth reading for anyone interested in philosophy. Cambridge publishes a lot of texts that would be useful for specialists but that should probably be much lower priority for general readers. I think Hackett is great.
But I’m still glad I read this. I learned about a bunch of publishers I should probably read.
Hmmm, I will take this opinion under advisement! And will definitely add your opinion as a note to this post.
I agree, Ethan. Thanks!
I'll add to the defense of Hackett--I assign them a lot because they are the cheapest alternative outside the Dover thrift editions, which generally don't have any apparatus and often use really old-fashioned translations.
As an ex-philosophy professor, I would agree, and flag that Hackett has a substantive breadth of great philosophical texts, with often very good translations - much more consistently than penguin or oxford world classics (although the latter is catching up). Cambridge has published a lot of classic philosophy in the last few years, but these are often quite expensive volumes.
I think the point this is the real point that I missed. Hackett is infinitely superior to Penguin or Oxford when it comes to this sort of text.
Hi Ethan. I'm the Publisher at Hackett and really appreciate your remarks! Naomi, I'm sorry if you haven't had a good experience with Hackett editions in the past. We do indeed aim primarily for student use, but what you describe as "low effort" is actually the product of significant work, wherein we do our best to ensure we are able to publish books that are both affordable and of high quality. Our typically simple designs, the translations we commission, what kind of apparatus we include -- more or less, scholarly or pedagogical – are all determined by the needs of our intended audience, which is mainly undergraduates in philosophy and classics, though also in history, literature, languages and other subjects in the humanities. If you ask around, I think you’ll find we generally have a strong reputation amongst our core community. That said, what we offer certainly isn’t right for every context, and I understand that it may not be best option given what you’re looking for. Thanks for this piece, and for your work more generally!
Thank you for this really thoughtful reply. My opinion of Hackett has been duly increased, and next week I'll note that I think I wasn't totally fair. I think my judgement of Hackett is the one that's aroused the most pushback, and that's definitely something that's worth noting.
My only issue with the Oxford World Classics--and this is an issue only caused because I buy old used paper editions--is that the ink on the pages tends to smudge very easily. If I rub a sweaty thumb with a little pressure on the surface of the page, the ink tends to smear. Everyman's Library and Library of America have better ink and paper, although the Library of America pages are a little thin for my taste.
I was surprised, also, not to see Dover Thrift Editions on your list. For my money they are the worst, least-attractively-typeset, most difficult-to-read books, and they have no prefatory material to speak of. (I found their version of Leaves of Grass nearly unreadable because the letters were so small and the pages looked so cramped.) Then again, they are in some sense doing God's work; you can buy a brand-new paper copy of many classic novels for $3, which is sort of an unbelievable price point, which makes them useful to assign to students who don't have much money and can't afford better editions. I spent many hours with my nose in Dover Thrift Editions in my undergraduate years.
I am definitely getting the sense that if I read more paper books my preferences would be different! With Dover, I don't know if they even have ebooks, but that's not really a focus of theirs anyways so it seems unfair to knock them for it. In their case I just really don't have enough experience with their books to be able to comment.
Dover's print books are terrible (they try to pack as much writing into one page as they can), but the ebooks are very good.
Dover is great for Russian classics for anyone partial to Constance Garnett (I am), also I prefer their cheap paper to whatever Penguin is using these days
Oh interesting--I haven't noticed bad paper on Penguins. (Nor am I erudite enough to really discern between translations.) The last book I got from Penguin, a copy of War and Peace, had pretty nice paper--smooth, no ink smudging, not too thin. But the issue I tend to have with Dover is not so much the ink or paper quality but the typesetting and design--the lines are so close together and so long, and the margins on the page so small, that I find them difficult. I had no idea I had so many strong preferences about these things until I started typing them out...
I think I'm complaining about good paper on the Penguins, rather than bad, it seems overbleached, maybe. whereas the Dovers, probably they don't actually smudge, but you get the feeling that they might, and I love that
I have a vintage paperback 12-volume set of Lang’s Rainbow Fairy Books by Dover Thrift Editions that I really like and will hang onto because DTE’s books are, like everything else, getting more expensive.
I’m a fan of Melville `house and NYRB classics myself. Mostly because of their titles. I love the Melville House novella series. Their translation of Turgenev’s First Love is the best I’ve read so far.
NYRB classics, yes we read them because we trust them but for good reason. I discovered HONG KONG writer Eileen Chang through them and I couldn’t put it down.
If you’re expanding beyond us publishers, Fitzcarraldo Press wins hands down for me.
Did they do a new translation??? Maybe I should get it. I've never read that one.
The two big Russian couple who are translating all the big ones like Tolstoy etc are not touching Turgenev . I can’t remember who did the Melville house one, but a friend of mine actually gave me another translation just before I moved to Paris, which I haven’t read yet, but I would say the Melville house and this new book that I required a probably the newest translations. Definitely try for the Melville house. Don’t read Constantine Garnett
90s-era Penguin Classics will always be my sentimental favorite, writing their back-of-book blurbs was always my dream job growing up. I am very intrigued by those cloth-bound coffee tables books you mention. Glad to see a mention of the Loeb Classical Library, if I ever get out of my tiny bohemian hovel in NYC and have the space for a proper library I just might have to invest in that entire series.
I just got a Loeb in the mail today and was thinking of posting a photo of a page of it as a comment here because the quality of the printing is so poor! This has been a problem for me before with them but my impressionistic sense is that it's getting worse. Really unfortunate as they're very useful to have around.
That is a shame, because who else does what they do? There's no competition!
I am awfully sorry to hear that! The only Loeb I ever owned was a handsome copy of the Anabasis that was well-crafted. They need to be careful, given the obscurity of a lot of their titles the sense of high-class craftsmanship is a lot of what they're selling. Bad printing undermines the premise of their brand.