Not the most elegant of titles but I wanted to avoid starting another thread with "Abridged books".

Edward Gibbon's Decline and fall of the Roman empire, in 8 volumes, lacks the great majority of Gibbon's notes.

Theodor Mommsen's A history of Rome is abridged by more than 50%.

Message edited by its author, Aug 29, 2008, 2:27pm.

Since I read the post in the Abridged Books thread that mentioned creating a listing of abridgements etc., I have thought about the matter since jveezer posted the idea.

First, I think it needs to be determined what information would we like included? Abridgements, emendations and other noticeable differences of course. jveezer also mentioned what edition it is based on, translators and illustrators and I agree that this is useful information. Does anyone have any other information the would like to see?

Second, just posting random books in this thread will not be all that helpful to anyone looking for information. In my opinion what is needed is a regularly update list that is hosted by a member of this group on their personal website. It should at least be maintained alphabetically by title, but it would be useful if it were a database that could be sorted by title or author.

Thought? Opinions?

Message edited by its author, Aug 17, 2008, 10:41pm.

Re #3: I thought Lola's suggestion was fine as is. I don't think we need to belabor the issue. Information such as that in posting #2 above is sufficient for my needs. If one of the members who has a personal website wants to follow LucasTrask's suggestion, I'm sure many will find it useful--I doubt I would. Like Joe Friday, I just want the facts (ma'm).

Lucas, perhaps you'd be interested in making a list on WikiThing? I must say I don't know how visible it would be there--most people interested in Folio books are likely to flock to this group and the threads where they can communicate with posters directly--but there's no denying that a list would be nice.

Still, since this is necessarily a collective enterprise (I doubt any single poster has the information on ALL abridged Folios), I think a thread is useful for collecting information.

As Django says, we don't need to be terribly formal about it--if you notice a title is abridged or something else notable about the edition, just post it.

Another thing--the links in my first post are hyperlinks, not touchstones (I was in a hurry and didn't want to fiddle around with the touchstones), but when I get a minute I'll add them, as I think we should do for all the books mentioned here, so that we get a list automatically in this thread.

Death comes for the Archbishop. Here's the info NOT on the website...

First published in Britain by William Heinemann Ltd in 1927. The Folio Society edition follows the text to the Heinemann edition, with minor emendations.

Le Grand Meaulnes. Here's the info NOT on the website...

First published in 1913 by Emile-Paul freres in Paris. Frank Davison's translation was first published in 1959 by Oxford University Press under the title The Lost Domain. This edition follows the text of the 1959 edition, with minor emendations. Illustrations (c) 2008.

The Mandarins Here's the info NOT on the website...

Translation first published in Great Britain by Collins in 1957. This edition follows the text of the first British edition with minor emendations. Illustrations (c) 2008.

But, jveezer, an emendation isn't an abridgement, is it? Or should we also beware of emendations? Can someone comment on this?

No, it's just a minor improvement--typos fixed, text corrected, etc.

I assumed jveezer was just making available the information not available on the website--text edition, translation, etc.--for anyone who might be curious about such things.

Re #9: jbmill3 is right. It's amazing but first editions--even in these times--can be loaded with printer's mistakes that slip by the proofreaders. A more serious form of emendation is where the editor either corrects "mistakes" in the author's manuscript or (in the case of handwritten manuscripts--which sounds like a pleonasm, but isn't really), misreads what the author wrote. Once again, these are not abridgements but simply fixing mistakes that shouldn't have occurred and don't really need to be elaborately documented.

When you get into cases where an editor makes changes in attempts to realize the author's true intentions--most usually in the case of a deceased author who has left a manuscript in an unfinished state or with multiple drafts--then you need to be made aware of such tampering (not to put too fine a distinction) by critical apparatus. Cases in point are Max Brod's editions of Kafka or the different versions of Melville's Billy Budd.

As for abridgements--I think many here have noted that abridgements aren't necessarily bad--but they should be forthrightly noted as such.

My intention was exactly as stated above...to fill in any missing info that isn't on the website. While most people appreciate emendations, they may want to know what edition the work is based on, whose translation it is, etc. I just want full disclosure.

Since I have been reading a fair amount of literature in translation, the translator is one of the items I am most curious about that is often left off the website. There has been lots of commentary on various translators of specific works in different threads here.

As far as abridgements, they have only affected me on two titles. I probably would not have bought the FS The Gulag Archipelago if I had known it was abridged...but now I'll probably read it anyway and then have to go search out a complete copy to compare. I love everything else about the book. I've also used the fact that Les Miserables is abridged as a shield against temptation. Alas, I have no such shield against many of their other limited editions.

Django: Is the LEC edition abridged? I'm OK if they moved a section to the back like I've seen in some editions. I just want it to be all there (I think).

I will not buy a translated work without knowing whose translation it is.

Message edited by its author, Aug 29, 2008, 11:45am.

Victor Klemperer's wartime diaries are abridged.

I shall bear witness

To the bitter end

Re #12: jveezer, the LEC version is not abridged, and includes the long Waterloo episode which was later printed by the LEC as a standalone volume (with illustrations reproduced from engravings by Edouard Detaille rather than the Lynd Ward illustrations done for the complete set). The LEC complete Le Mierables uses Wraxelle's translation and runs over 1500 pages in 5 volumes.

For those considering the Gogol Collected Stories (like me) this year, I wanted to share that the Folio Society edition will use the older Constance Garnett translation. Everyman's Library is publishing a more contemporary translation (1998 originally) of the Collected Stories from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (but, of course, no illustrations).

The illustrations for the Gogol book look great in the Prospectus and will probably sway me into settling for the older translation (unless I get crazy and buy both!).

Oh, thanks for that information on Gogol. I don't generally like reading Russians in English, but I'm very tempted by the looks of that book. I've never read Garnett's translations but I'm aware of her reputation at least as a pioneer and champion of Russian lit. Does anyone have strong feelings, pro or contra, for her translations?

I recommend staying far away from Garnett's translations. She takes Russian works and puts them into Edwardian English without much respect for the author's actual style, and the result is not very good. Pevear and Volokhonsky (probably mispelled) are the way to go when it comes to Russian translations.

Well, Garnett was a contemporary or a near-contemporary of some of the authors she translated. Edwardian English was the English of her time. I often prefer older contemporary translations because they give one a sense of time past such as one would get when reading in the original, and new(er) translations are not a guarantee of quality--witness the many bad modern translations of Russian poetry, Pasternak etc. I'm wondering more about the quality of her translations, how much of an ear she had for Russian, how the text flows, whether there are mistakes, omissions and so on.

I'm not qualified to compare translations, but, like most readers my age (45), the Garnett translations of the great Russian writers were the ones I first encountered. They were certainly no stumbling block to being completely mesmerized by Dostoevsky. Given the accolades the Pevear/Volokhonsky team has earned, I am interested in reading their translations of the great Russians, but have not to date.

Several years back, I read the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of The Three Musketeers. The contemporary language added clarity to some of the action scenes and made for easy reading. I thought a little of the romantic quality of the language in an earlier translation I had read as a kid was lost. Either that or I'm just older and my perspective has changed.

I'm with pm11 about how some of the older translations have a romantic beauty that a more modern, perhaps even more accurate, translation often lacks.

That said, I have to say that I find Garnett's translations are generally serviceable, and that her Tolstoy and Turgenev are better than her Dostoevsky. My The Brothers Karamazov from the Limited Editions Club used her translation as revised and cleaned up by Yarmolinsky and is the better for it, but Magarshack's translation is better yet, from a readability standpoint, though lacking the period feel that Garnett's English has (whether that is a plus or minus is, I think, a subjective matter, but I agree with LolaWalser's opinion that it is a plus).

It seems that we have discussed this on another thread, but to reiterate, unless you are fluent in Russian and English, like Nabokov, I have to say that I generally prefer English translations of Russian authors which are the best English, and that my favorite translations are usually recreations of the originals, that communicate best the spirit of the original without being slavish to literal meanings--FitzGerald's translations of the Rubaiyat being the example par excellence.

As far as Constance Garnett is concerned, I asked a professor of Russian about her translations once. He smiled gently and said, simply, "accurate". I think that's worth a lot, but it meant to me that I shouldn't expect the prose to wow my late 20th century ear. I like her translations, but they are rather stiff. I like the fact that they're accurate though.

I've heard a lot of good reports on Pevear's stuff - nice to read while generally true to the original.

I won't buy a translated book if I don't know the translator. I won't buy any of Jules Verne's works in English unless it was translated after 1950 - the earlier, 'standard' translations were a fraud, and contributed greatly to Verne's reputation in the UK and USA as a juvenile sci-fi writer. Miller's loving translations will really surprise you if you've only read the older Verne translations - Verne was writing for a scientifically curious, adult audience.

I suspect Verne was not the first, nor the last to get shafted by a translator.

Os.

Having just picked up a sealed copy on eBay of the three volumes of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which I'm very pleased with, I thought I'd post here to correct something I spotted on another post a while back in this forum.

Contrary to that post, which bemoaned the lack of footnotes to translate the many Latin quotes, I can confirm that the FS edition translates in square brackets within the text any Latin or Greek which Burton himself has not translated or paraphrased in an adjacent phrase (he does this frequently, and a quick glance at the text makes it look more obscure to a non-Classical linguist than it really is).

Er, leonb, I might be the person responsible for having posted something on footnotes in the Anatomy of Melancholy. Sorry if I was too imprecise and even wrong. What I wanted to say was that I would have liked some edited footnotes to better explain the context to an average reader like me. Besides, I confirm that some (rare) whole passages (sometimes half-pages) are not translated at all, probably because the editor, in the 1930s, thought it better not to do it. At least this is what I guess. (For instance, in Part. 1, melancholy being caused by the way one's parents behaved...) My Latin is just too rusty to understand what Burton means there.

BTW I lately bought The Voyce of the World from the New Year Sale. Even if I'm sure I'll have to struggle again with this other book, I already found funny and odd passages which make me think that Browne will be more enjoyable than Burton. There are no footnotes, but margin notes, which gives the book a true 17c. appearance. Cover, spine, paper and font are great. I'm really happy with this new book and I recommend it heartily.

Edited PS: And, to come back to the topic of this thread, The Voyce of the World contains Browne's major works, all apparently unabridged, EXCEPT Pseudodoxia Epidemica which is largely abridged.

Message edited by its author, Mar 3, 2009, 3:54am.

I'm not sure I would classify this as an abridged book, but I was looking at my copy of Life by Fortey that arrived today. I compared it to a paperback copy by Knopf publisher, and the illustrations seem to all be different; the ones in the Folio edition are color and along similar themes but definitely different from the black and white ones in the Knopf. Does anyone know what they were in the original publication of Life and are all the Folio illustrations new for this addition and different from the original? I typically don't mind additional illustrations added to an original but don't necessarily like them being changed altogether.

If someone would be willing to collect the information and send it to me I'd be willing to create a page and host it.

A friend I know who reads Russian says that Rosemary Edmonds' translations of Tolstoy (for the Penguin editions) feel closest to the originals to him. He says that Tolstoy wrote a muscular, direct Russian that Garnett "prettifies" into stately and polite Victorian English. Edmonds, who had experience in war (as DeGaulle's translator during WWII), is less prissy in dealing with Tolstoy's bluntness, which he says reminds him of Hemingway at times. (It must be said, however, that Hemingway was deeply impressed by "War and Peace" in the Garnett translation.)

My friend was not familiar with the Pevear translations.

Whatever their other merits, the Edmonds translations are very readable. I made several assaults on "War and Peace" in the Garnett translation and never got anywhere with it -- the Edmonds version hooked me right away.

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 9:03am.

Re #27: This post points up one of the problems with translations: your Russian-speaking friend says Tolstoy's "bluntness" reminds him at times of Hemingway.

Well, for one who has read much Hemingway--and I have read a LOT!--one description of his prose I never would have thought of would be "blunt." Hemingway was obsessive about his prose, and fought to keep it allusive and impressionistic--sometimes to the point where the seeming transparency of his sentences makes the underlying meaning nearly opaque. Those who have read both parts of "Big, Two-Hearted River" realize that the same writer who created some of the most memorable short, short stories ever written, would not have spent so many pages to just describe a fishing trip, but a casual reader might think it just an article in "Field and Stream."

Even better, I love to have all my friends who are so quick to accept the portrait of Hemingway as a bluff, macho poseur, read "Hills Like White Elephants." The portrait of the breakup of a relationship in the face of an unplanned pregnancy, and the conflicting emotions on the part of the participants is limned with a subtlety and psychological insight that make it a favorite of short story anthologists to this day.

So--if someone characterizes Tolstoy's prose as "blunt" like Hemingway's, I wonder if his own English is accomplished enough to recognize that "blunt" does not mean the same as "spare" or "restrained."

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 12:03pm.

Blunt was my word, not my friend's, and perhaps it was ill-chosen. It does suggest the directness of Hemingway's prose, which I think was designed to startle -- like a slap in the face. Your characterization of it as "spare" and "restrained" doesn't quite capture this quality. Of course all this is quite distinct from the subtlety of his underlying literary strategies and allusions. Pevear has commented on a similar quality of Tolstoy's Russian, which he goes so far as to describe as crude at times. Both Tolstoy and Hemingway adopted a kind of "bluntness" in their language almost as a reaction to Victorian circumlocution.

"Blunt" doesn't just evoke a "blunt instrument" -- it is also used in the sense of "let me be blunt", meaning "let me give it to you straight", and that's the quality in both Hemingway and Tolstoy I was trying to suggest.

My larger point remains that there are passages in Edmonds's "War and Peace" which read like Hemingway -- there are none in Garnett's translation which do.

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 9:34pm.

>27, 28 - Another curious point about translations from Russian: I have heard the same opinion from several Russian-speaking people (including Nabokov in his published lectures) - namely that Dostoyevsky writes badly. They say that even though his ideas are good, it is clear he dictated his work rapidly and didn't edit enough. Some have even gone so far as to say that the English and French translations are too good and polished.

I have not been able to make up my mind about this - Is it an instance of literary snobbery or not...

It's a complicated question, addressed in this article from "The New Yorker":

(http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11...)

Richard Pevear is interviewed and talks about Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's "bad writing", which he sees as a deliberate literary strategy, at least in part -- in any case something characteristic of their writing styles, which he feels should be suggested in a translation, if not reproduced exactly.

Re #30 & 31: All of this brings me back to a concept I have been discussing on various threads here for a while: namely, that a translation at best may be an unique work in itself. In a recent posting somewhere else, I quoted the opening lines of The Odyssey in several different translations--each at one time being considered "the best available." While the meaning in each version is the same as in the the original, the style, the diction, and the figures of speech used (even when a corresponding figure of speech either is not in the original, or is only implied by a choice of one word over another--a subtlety which only someone with a very extensive knowledge of the original language would know, and which may, or may not, have been a distinction used by the original author in his choice of that word), are sometimes drastically different.

So which translation is the best? I believe it is the one that is the best read for the reader. If the language and syntax of an older version keep you from reading War and Peace, then I feel that it is a bad translation, despite how faithful it may be to the writer's style and despite how keen an insight the translator thinks he has into the thought processes of the original author.

Again, I still think there are enough fine books written in English as yet unpublished as Folio editions that I'm not very excited about another edition of a classic from a foreign language.

"If this be treason, make the most of it."

>31 - Thanks for the great link!

>32 - Excellent summary of the various threads. I second all of the opinions expressed.

Translations are all creations of their time and therefore new ones are needed as the original is viewed differently.

But what about 'Star Translators' - writers who are more famous in their time than the original author(s). Are they indeed creating new original works or giving us an ego-trip so familiar from the cinema: "Director X's Hamlet, based on the play by W. Shakespeare"

I'm thinking of course of Burton and Pound, but also of "Ted Hughes: Tales from Ovid" (Heaney's Beowulf at least has "A New Translation" on the cover). Are they stealing the original's thunder or creating new works?

I also second the last opinion, namely that FS still has many fine works written in English to publish before starting to re-publish works in new translations (But - I just ordered the FS "Art of Love", despite having survived very well until now with their 1965 "Ars Amatoria").

Django is right -- the question of translations is totally subjective. First of all, you can never truly know if a translation is "accurate", in detail or tone, unless you know both languages well. If you don't, you have to rely on experts, who have their own subjective criteria.

More importantly, every good literary text works on many different levels, each of which can be privileged or downplayed to one degree or another, depending on the translator. And every language has peculiar quirks and resonances which simply cannot be transferred into another language -- and these are often crucial to the meaning of a text.

I was lucky enough to study Greek in high school and read large chunks of "The Iliad" and I have never found a translation which gets the "feel" of the original Greek, its weird mix of formula and inventiveness, gravity and momentum, detail and ellipsis.

Stanley Lombardo's translation comes closest, but it is wildly anachronistic in terms of language, using phrases like "chow down". Yet it really captures the bold dynamism of Homer's Greek.

Rilke said that love "is the mutual respect of two solitudes" -- and that's probably the best image of the relationship between a great text and great translation of it.

Message edited by its author, May 29, 2009, 8:35pm.

The Folio edition of Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition is "abridged by the author". I don't know the nature and length of the abridged passages.

At any rate, while I would ordinarily want the Folio edition (it's also part of a series including other titles on late Middle Ages--The black death, The Elizabethan underworld etc.), I think I'll go with the original (revised) edition from Yale.

I didn't expect an abridgement of The Spanish Inquisition.

Well, that made me laugh.

Did you notice the thread celebrating John Cleese's 70th birthday? Somebody found him a very special cake.

No one EVER abridges the Spanish Inquisition!!!!

I was considering starting a site for us to track this. My thoughts were along the line that users could sign up and add the information on FS and other fine publishers and provide pictures, comments etc. Would anyone be interested in something like this? Any ideas on functionality? This wouldn't be a for profit site just something to provide all of us a place to find information on volumes we have an interest in.

>39
We're no longer talking about the Spanish Inquisition, are we? ;-)

Os.

LOL No, I was referring to the abridgment discussion.

Where is the comfy chair??

I finally got around to starting my list of FS books that includes title, author, publication date, publication note-other notes-abridgement info posted on LT and short story titles in collections, translator (if there is one) and LT contributor. I have put it up on GoogleDocs and everyone should be able to view it. The URL is http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0...

I currently have only entered a part of my FS titles to the spreadsheet and I hope to add additional titles regularly until I have my enter FS collection entered. If anyone has FS titles they would like to add just send me a note with your email address and I will add you as an editor so you can update it.

I would also welcome comments, positive or negative.

>43 - Forgot the "n" at the end of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's name. :-)

Message 43 your doc says FS Gibbon "lacks the great majority Gibbon's notes"
Please provide some evidence, link perhaps?

Cole_Hendron: Evidence? He needs to provide evidence?

I suggest that you call the Folio Society, if you don't believe LucasTrask. You're in Canada? 866-255-7314

Oh, all right, I'll do some work for you. This isn't evidence, but it is more people saying the same thing:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/72090

> 45

They told me in the Members Room that the great majority of the footnotes had been excluded. So there you have it "from the horses mouth". As I have posted previously, Folio have not yet done justice to Gibbon's masterwork. We need a Folio Gibbon with footnotes intact.

46 and 47, a quote or link from Folio saying they are abridged would be proof.
Nothing in the hardcopy says they are.
The onus is on the person making this claim.

Well, it's not exactly a secret... I don't have Folio's set anymore, but I believe it is stated in the introduction that the footnotes are only a selection.

Finally, perhaps someone who has the set could compare it to the version(s) available on Project Gutenberg (if other full version is unavailable)--please scroll down to Gibbon, I don't think it's possible to link to separate author names:

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/...

Cole, the problem is that the Society doesn't publish this information. It is only after you receive the book and you either notice yourself, it is printed on the copyright page, or it is mentioned in the introduction, note, etc.

As for Gibbon's, I do not own the set and just included what was posted in this thread.

Many members have indicated that they find this information helpful, so I thought I would compile and make it available in one easy to use location. You can choose to ignore the information if you wish.

Cole: No, the onus is on the person who cares and doesn't believe the person who makes the claim. This isn't a debate, it's a forum for chatting and exchanging information.

If you don't believe the information, and it matters to you, then make a call on the toll-free number. If you care about sharing the information you find, then let us all know how the call went.

Lucas is trying to do something helpful by compiling what people have said about the books. It's not up to him to provide proof to anyone.

>49 "I believe it is stated in the introduction to the FS Gibbon that the footnotes are only a selection."

In the 'Introduction to Volume I' of the FS edition, the editor, Betty Radice, writes:
"The Folio Society's edition of Gibbon's 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' is planned in eight volumes, which will contain the whole of the original text, based on Dent's Everyman edition of 1910. The notes included are all by Gibbon, but are only a selection from the great number he wrote. They are chosen to illustrate as many aspects as possible of the author, and to refer to points suggested in the present editor's Introduction."

To take as an example Chapter XV, 'The Progress of the Christian Religion...', there are 41 footnotes in the Folio edition out of 200 in David Womersley's complete edition (1994, ISBN 0713991240).

In the selection which Folio prints, it seems that references to the Bible are retained but references to other authors are omitted, eg,

Womersley (10.) AND Folio (1st footnote - they are unnumbered):
"How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they 'believe' me, for all the 'signs' which I have shown among them?" (Numbers xiv. II.) It would be easy, but it would be unbecoming, to justify the complaint of the Deity from the whole tenor of the Mosaic history. (single quotes for italics)

but:

Womersley
19. Eusebius, l.iii. c.5 Le Clerc, Hist. Ecclesiast. p.605.
During this occasional absence, the bishop and church of Pella still retained the title of Jerusalem. In the same manner, the Roman pontiffs resided seventy years at Avignon; and the patriarchs of Alexandria have long since transferred their episcopal seat to Cairo.

Folio
2nd footnote:
During this occasional absence, the bishop and church of Pella still retained the title of Jerusalem. In the same manner, the Roman pontiffs resided seventy years at Avignon; and the patriarchs of Alexandria have long since transferred their episcopal seat to Cairo.

Gibbon's footnote 23 ends with:
...According to Le Clerc, the Hebrew word 'Ebjonim' may be translated into Latin by that of 'Pauperes'. See Hist. Ecclesist. p.477.
Folio omits: See Hist. Ecclesist. p.477.

Footnote 42 in Womersley:
See Tertullian, 'De Spectaculis'. This severe reformer shews no more indulgence to a tragedy of Euripides, than to a combat of gladiators. The dress of the actors particularly offends him. By the use of the lofty buskin, they impiously strive to add a cubit to their stature, c.23.

Folio reprints the entire footnote, but carefully omits "c.23"!

Footnote 54 ends:
...See Bayle, Responses aux Questions d'un Provincial, part iii. c.22.
Folio: ...See Bayle, Responses aux Questions d'un Provincial.

I hope this is helpful in giving you a feel of the Folio edition as against the full version.

Thanks, boldface!

>52
Way above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks,

Os.

boldface, thank you, I have added your information to my spreadsheet

Message edited by its author, Nov 4, 2009, 8:57am.

You guys are nicer than I am. Thank God for nice people! I'd hate to live in a world populated only by the likes of me.

Boldface your answer is complete and honest to the limits of this thread. I truly hope that your effective effort will finish this argument. Any further "debate" would be argumentative for the sake of argument and to no further rational end and a Complete Waste of Time.

Thanks Boldface. A very effective contribution to this long running debate.

I aim to please! It didn't take that long, with both editions to hand.

Despite it's shortcomings on the footnote front, I still think the Folio edition is very handsome, particularly in the second binding ("full cream vegetable parchment...decorated in gold red and blue). The text itself is complete and well printed, and the volumes are light enough to read comfortably. The editor, Betty Radice, was a well-respected classical scholar and translator and a senior editor at Penguin Classics for some 25 years. (Her translation of Pliny's Letters is a favourite of mine.)

Incidentally, I'd be interested to know if the 1910 Everman edition on which the Folio is based has abridged footnotes or not.

> 59

I don't have the 1910 Everyman but I have read the current Everyman Gibbon which I believe is also based on the 1910 edition but reset.

The footnotes are intact, but there is another irritant in the form of an over zealous Edwardian editor (Oliver Smeaton, I think) who constantly adds his own supplemental footnotes to Gibbons text. Smeaton snaps at Gibbons heels like a badly trained terrier.

Message edited by its author, Nov 4, 2009, 12:22pm.

Just to add that Betty Radice died with the editing of the Folio set half completed, the second half being edited by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. He contributes a further Introduction at the beginning of Volume V, with a long comment on footnotes. An extract from this introduction:
'(Betty Radice) evidently felt - and rightly - that it is a pity to sacrifice any of Gibbon's notes. They are, looked at collectively, the glory of his History. Like the concubines of George of Cappadocia, they are intended for both ostentation and use.'

> 59 "Smeaton snaps at Gibbons heels like a badly trained terrier."

Thanks for that delicious image. It only makes me want to see for myself!

> 61

Thanks, affle, I'd forgotten that. It's a while since I looked at the Folio edition and I was too hasty, although I hope I fall into the category alluded to in the first sentence of Professor Fernández-Armesto's Introduction: "Members of the Folio Society who follow Gibbon's example and read their books before consigning them to their shelves. . . ."

For those still trying to gauge how the notes have been edited, Fernández-Armesto goes on to say:

"Only by considering (the notes) as a whole can one see them for what they are: a masterly distillation of eighteenth-century learning on the subjects which Gibbon covered. But, given that for the purposes of of the present edition a selection has to be made, Mrs Radice concentrated on illustrating three themes: Gibbon's scholarship, his character and his tastes. . . Mrs Radice had an an uncanny ability to identify the most telling footnotes; in part, it was an instinctive gift, in part a practised art, derived from long and loving acquaintance with Gibbon's work. Every footnote lost or limited is a source of pain to me, but I have tried to follow faithfully the indications she left and to make a selection which reflects as nearly as possible the spirit of her own."

He also adds a note to say that after he had finished work on Volume 5, "a second working copy...with further annotations by Betty Radice, came to light. It seems to show that she intended to make fewer deletions from the notes than I had supposed, but also that her selection would have been substantially the same as mine."

I thank all for the clarification.
Boldface is the Everyman in fact the complete option?

Cole_Hendron, see http://www.librarything.com/topic/72090, particularly message 12 onwards.

I haven't seen the Everyman edition, but Quicksilver recommends it, with reservations (message 60 above). I recommend the Womersley edition, which is the 'standard' edition but quite expensive. However, apparently it's also available in a Penguin edition (which, again, I've not personally seen).

Message edited by its author, Nov 4, 2009, 8:58pm.

"Her (Betty Radice's) translation of Pliny's Letters is a favourite of mine."

Mine, too, Boldface! I still have my much-travelled blood-, sea-, and wine-stained Penguin Classic edition from the 60s. Pliny's description of his Laurentine villa - "the poetics of real estate" someone called it - still makes me drool with envy.

A thought: has the Society ever done the Letters? Perhaps even (be still my beating heart) in Betty's translation?

Message edited by its author, Nov 6, 2009, 5:58pm.

>66 Yes, and yes, in 1978.

'This translation of Pliny's letters is a revision of the one first published by Penguin Books in 1963. Some of the less generally interesting personal letters have been omitted...'

>67 Thanks, affle! I'll see if I can track it down - to supplement the Penguin, not replace it: it's good for another 40 years (which is more than I am..)

I think an abridgement to a book is akin to an amputation to a limb.

Les Miserables abridged? Shockeroonies.

Can anyone confirm that the Macaulay is wholly unabridged (including footnotes)? I had a hurried look at it the other day in the Members Room, found nothing to suggest any abridgment, but you never know!

I have just received the FS edition of Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America". According to the blurb at the front, it "follows the text of the 2007 Penguin Books paperback edition".

It does not !!!!!!!

Instead, it's a selection from that book. In the Penguin Book there are 104 letters, in the FS book just 54.

In other words, barely half the book. To put it mildly, I am disappointed, and feel that the FS need to be a lot more transparent about what they are doing if they are to retain trust - especially after this summer's debacle over differentiated membership offers. I'm seriously considering sending back, and asking for return of money. Never felt this way before about an FS book, and am sad that they did go down the route of slashing the size.

Do they use uniform formulas to describe content? It seems to me "follows the text..." doesn't match previous instances I've seen of indicating complete (i. e. identical) reprints.

> 71

I sympathise with Willoyd and agree that the FS blurb should be more specific - eg, they should say how many letters are included. However, as the complete Alistair Cooke Letters archive runs to over six million words and 2,869 episodes, any one-volume edition is only ever going to be a selection.

Incidentally, I see that they may soon be available online:

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/pres...

An interesting follow-up to the Letters from America would be Cooke's original NBC talks addressed to Britain, 'London Letter'.

Seems that the Catlin North American Indians volume is an abridgement as the Folio web site refers to it containing the highlights of Catlin's prose and paintings.

I sympathise with Willoyd and I too would return the Alistair Cooke. Folio's description of the text being based on the Penguin edition was misleading.

Actually the website blurb, on which I made the decision to buy this book, does not indicate that it is based on the penguin edition, although the book itself does. To be fair to FS (for once) I don't think it is misleading advertising as such. The only real issue is whether, having bought the book, you then conclude that you are getting the full content of the Penguin book.

Quite right, of course, the website doesn't say it is based on the Penguin edition. I read the website, and deduced from the text that it was probably the Penguin edition given the Folio treatment or possibly a completely new selection (it does say a "new selection"). Given the propensity of FS to change book's names, I thought that a book with the same name might actually be that particular book. Either way I would have been happy. Very foolishly I didn't double check. To me the wording at the front of the FS edition underlines their apparent inability to get these things right, even in the book itself.

My impression is that the text on the website has now been changed slightly, but could be very much mistaken.

I suppose my disappointment is really in that the Folio edition is actually a very poor shadow of the 'cheaper' version (which I do have in hardback first edition). Pretty cover and all that, but given the quality of the man's writings, that's what really matters.

I still feel that the FS do not give anywhere near enough of the important information (as opposed to sales blurb) about either the provenance of the book or about other production matters (e.g. STILL waiting for Pepys after over 3 months in spite of no warnings until this week), a serious weakness that has bubbled under for a while, but has recently more seriously undermined my opinion of the society.

In the meantime, rather than go to the hassle of sending the book back, it's found a good home with a friend who enjoys this sort of journalism, but has never tried Cooke before.

Message edited by its author, Dec 4, 2009, 5:21pm.