Norton Critical Editions debate, post publisher-series version

I know this has been debated extensively many times, so if everyone would rather not do it again, please feel free to ignore this thread and consign it to oblivion.

However, after recently acquiring a Norton Critical Edition, I was wondering whether, now that we have a publishers series field, there is still a strong need - and consensus - to keep separating these out from other editions of the same book.

(For those who aren't familiar, Norton Critical Editions include some classic text - say, Hamlet - in full, and then extensive additional materials placing the work in historical and critical context: excerpts from other writings of the times, from historical research, and from scholarly criticism about the book. The current de facto consensus seems to be to keep these as a separate "work" on LT from the other copies of the work that don't include that critical apparatus.)

I don't have a strong view on this; I'm leaning slightly toward preferring combining, but I am curious what others think, and will of course respect the consensus. I'm brainstorming here, but here are some of the arguments I recall or can imagine on both sides:

REASONS TO KEEP SEPARATE:
1) Because these contain extensive extra materials, they are no longer the same "work." The Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet is substantially different from, and a separate LT work from, other editions of Hamlet.
Response: lots of books contain appendices, introductions, and other critical apparatus, but that isn't generally a reason to separate. Question: is it about the extent of critical apparatus in this case? Is there a page number or percentage threshold here, past which the critical apparatus makes it a new work?
2) It needs to be separate in order to be part of the "Norton Critical Editions" series.
Response: now that we have the publisher series field, there's no reason to keep an edition separate just to maintain a series. (And that reason wouldn't have applied to other series.)
3) From a social/cocktail-party perspective, people are particularly interested whether or not they share the NCE of Hamlet.
I've never heard that argument, and I don't know if anyone would make it, but it's possible.

REASONS TO COMBINE
1) From a social/cocktail-party perspective, people don't care whether or not they share the NCE of Hamlet, but only whether or not they both own/have read Hamlet.
Response: see 3 above.
2) Lots of books have appendices and other critical apparatus, but that's secondary to the central text, and shouldn't be the basis of separating them. There are also various other publishers that put out critical editions, and it is not really worth it to separate multiple versions of a book simply because of differences in appendices, etc.
Response: The critical apparatus in the case of NCEs is different in a way that makes these a completely different work. The critical apparatus is more lengthy, or different in some other way from other books that have introductions, critical appendices, etc.

Anyway, any thoughts? Any other arguments on either side that I've forgotten?

I've never happened to use an NCE version of a text, so it's a bit over my head. But I'm still interested in how this turns out. I always thought there was more similarity than difference between a work and its NCE to the point that they're probably worth combining, but as I said, I'm not all that familiar with them.

I don't have any additional arguments, but I have 4 NCEs on hand that I can refer to for analysation of contents. I'm a big fan of critical editions, particularly NCE and Broadview. I feel weird combining them, because I buy them specifically for the critical elements.

Charlotte Temple is 80% NOT the title text - I don't see how that can be combined, since only 90 of 500 pages is the title text. It's not the same work at all as the Penguin edition or anything else that is just the book and an introduction. Much of the extras are completely different and not commentaries or the like about CT itself.

Sister Carrie is maybe 356/600 for title text, so I guess 40% NOT the title text. But all the additional material is about the book in some way. (Yet I don't know if it's in other not-critical-edition books - extracts from other Dreiser writing that shows the historical people/events that inspired the characters and plot.)

Frankenstein is 160/330, so 50% is the main text. Several of the contextual parts are extracts from other authors and not about the main text, not specifically.

Jane Eyre is 389/530, 75% main text. Much of the context is Charlotte Bronte juvenalia, but also letters from the publishing process of the book.

I feel very strongly that Charlotte Temple should NOT be combined, slightly less strongly about Jane Eyre and Frankenstein, and even less strongly about Sister Carrie. I catalogued the last one by the editor, but if someone were to combine it with the main entry, I wouldn't fuss. (I would fuss about CT, though.)

So, basically, I guess I feel that it's a case-by-case basis if NCEs should be combined. On the whole, because of the nature of the contexts, and because I buy the books specifically for the extra stuff (and I recommend them for that reason!), I lean towards not combining.

I used to have several other NCEs, but had to sell them for gas money and such. I have a few Broadview Literary Texts which are very similar with having extensive contexts/criticisms, and I'd keep them separate, as well. But I also have several Barnes & Noble Classics editions with some criticsm in the back which are very middle-of-the-road and never particularly feel like they have the same academic quality as the other two. For one, there is rarely as much additional material as in the NCE/BLT books.

 
ETA:

My suggestion is to keep NCE separate until the contains/contained in is worked out. At which point you'll have Jane Eyre NCE contains Jane Eyre (standard). (or maybe Jane Eyre (standard) contained in Jane Eyre NCE).

lots of books contain appendices, introductions, and other critical apparatus, but that isn't generally a reason to separate.

These aren't appendices, introductions or critical apparatus. They're essays and primary sources at the same level in the book as the text. I'm looking at the Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet, and the play is section one, about hundred pages. Then 20 pages of Intellectual Backgrounds, 20 pages of Extracts from the Sources, and then 150 pages of Essays in Criticism, all sections at the same level in the book as the text of the play.

Is there a page number or percentage threshold here, past which the critical apparatus makes it a new work?

No. Critical apparatus, the identifying of textual variations, is inherently part of the text. Criticism and other works is a different question; if 40% the text is criticism, then I'm for separating it. I'm also for separating series that normally cross that line as a whole.

4> They're essays and primary sources at the same level in the book as the text.

I think this is the crux of what makes a NCE or Broadview Literary Text compared to the other books that I own, but I didn't know how to say it, except "not about the main text".

4 and 5: When you say it's at the same level of the text, or that the book is "not about the main text", what do you mean? Why would someone buy an NCE copy of Hamlet if they weren't interested in the text itself? There are presumably plenty of edited scholarly collections about Hamlet out there, that don't contain the text. NCEs do.

On the "level" question: It may be that the critical apparatus as a whole is somehow elevated close to the same level (in importance(?) in the pages), but no individual piece within that critical apparatus is. I have the NCE of Hard Times, for instance, and it is 222 pages of the original text, another 50 pages of notes on the text (about alterations across editions, text history, etc. - pretty standard to any scholarly edition of a "classic"). Then there's about 70 pages in the "Contexts" section, which contains about 20 or so excerpts, which are individually between 1-5 pages long, and about 110 pages of Criticism, containing excerpts of about 15 pieces, individually ranging between 1-10 pages. Arguably, the original text is still the heart of the book, both in focus and in proportion.

They're essays and primary sources at the same level in the book as the text.
I get your point to an extent, but they are usually excerpts from essays and primary sources: quite short ones, individually not emphasized to anything like the same level as the text itself.

These aren't appendices, introductions or critical apparatus.
Isn't this just semantics, though? I may buy a specific edition of a philosophy text precisely because it contains a good biography of the author as part of the paratexts, and some appendices with excerpts from related writings by the authors, or contemporary responses. I don't see much difference between that case and the NCE cases, except if it's just about number of pages.

I have some Broadview texts too, so the same questions apply to them.

Just out of curiosity, here are some polls (apologies to those who hate polls, but I'm interested to see how many people care about this, and how the votes fall). Note the word always: I mean should we do this in general, not on a case by case basis.

For the record, I'm undecided right now.

The opposite of a case-by-case basis would be a blanket rule that treats all NCEs the same way (whether to combine or to separate). If you think it should be decided case-by-case, it would be helpful to weigh in on what might matter for deciding individual cases.

On the case-by-case issue, I'd prefer a rule that applies to all NCEs, whatever the rule is (whether combine or separate).

6> When you say it's at the same level of the text, or that the book is "not about the main text", what do you mean? Why would someone buy an NCE copy of Hamlet if they weren't interested in the text itself? There are presumably plenty of edited scholarly collections about Hamlet out there, that don't contain the text. NCEs do.

Of course you buy an NCE because you're interested in the main text - but you also get the NCE because it does have the others. If you didn't care about the rest of it, why spend the extra money for an NCE? (Well, I suppose if you must purchase it so your page numbers match the instructor's, but then the question goes to why the instructor chose it over a different book.)

The NCE (or Broadview) is an all-in-one. It's not JUST the title text, it's ALSO the rest. A regular critical book is just the rest, not the title text. A regular edition is just the title text, not the rest.

When I look at my Charlotte Temple (NCE), it looks like an anthology to me, which happens to include critical essays and excerpts. 400 pages worth. Not all are excerpted, though many are.

I just flipped through the Jane Eyre (NCE) and the first three critical essays (haven't checked the rest) are NOT excerpts. In fact, the third and sixth ones were written specifically for this NCE of Jane Eyre.

The essays in Sister Carrie don't look to be excerpts, either, though the sections about historical basis for characters/events are taken from other things Dreiser wrote.

Arguably, the original text is still the heart of the book, both in focus and in proportion.

Well, yes. The books are centered around the title text - the contexts and criticisms aren't thrown in willy-nilly. But as for proportion - what kind of proportions do you expect? Many of the essays are short, yes, but the length helps keep the books from being massive while still allowing different examinations of the text along with the title text. There's no need to include things that aren't relevant to the examination of the title text.

But there's no comparison between a Barnes & Noble Classic edition and a Broadview or NCE. I pulled a few off my shelves, and there's one post-text essay and a question/discussion section.

8> I do think some NCE books are more distinct than others, like I said. I think they should all be kept separate, but if perhaps some just have too little non-title-text to make it worthwhile, others which are only 20% title text really aren't the same as another book which is only the title text, even if that other 400 pages are made up of 10 pages of this and 15 pages of that.

I lean towards keeping them separate because of the extra material. Part of the purpose of the NCE is to give critical response and background to the text - not just to present the original text. The extra stuff is not just an introduction, but a taste of the critical thought out there about the work. It feels different than just an introduction or notes that many editions might include.

Another issue is the still beta and incomplete contains/contained function. I think the best solution is to keep the NCEs separate and have them contain their principle works.

I just check the one critical edition that I own (because the professor made me), and sure enough, it had been separated from the main work. So I changed the title to match just the work, blanked the ISBN and it recombined with the main work. So there's an opt-out for those of us who want to be in with the cocktail party crowd.

I would say just don't go hunting for information to "help" people who haven't labeled their critical editions for easy separation.

You know - it is not just the NCEs (especially when Shakespeare is involved - Arden (to name one for an example) is pretty much the same deal... and there are a few more series like that that are lumped into the big works)

I would say that anything that has more than 1/3rd of the book in additional materials should stay separate -- yes, it is the same book but why would you have this edition if you need just the text?

>6 rsterling: I get your point to an extent, but they are usually excerpts from essays and primary sources: quite short ones, individually not emphasized to anything like the same level as the text itself.

In the NCEs? Usually they are specially commissioned essays which are not published anywhere else and as a full body of text (all of them in that volume) are giving a full coverage of the topic. Even if it there is a longer essay somewhere it is either written later or the author themselves made the shorter one (so it is not an excerpt per se). As for the primary sources -- especially the ones pre-17th century -- the parts there are the ones relevant... you do not need to publish the whole rambling text of a 16th century scholar when you need the part about that particular novel/play.

And the same is valid for most of the Critical editions of Shakespeare.

>I don't see much difference between that case and the NCE cases, except if it's just about number of pages.

So having 300 pages of criticism and additional texts is not a reason to separate a book? Then should we also combine all story collections that have the same core 5 stories but additional one that is different in each collection? Or additional 2? Or 3? Even if these materials are not part of the main work, they are part of the book... Think of these more like collections of the main work AND additional non-fiction works than it being just the main work...

PS: If everyone decided to keep them together, I won't go and start separating. But I still believe we should keep them separate

#6: Why would someone buy an NCE copy of Hamlet if they weren't interested in the text itself?

Because they wanted an introductory critical collection of works about Hamlet? Because they read on the go, and don't want to have to a separate copy of Hamlet to refer to while reading about the play?

There are presumably plenty of edited scholarly collections about Hamlet out there, that don't contain the text.

I'm not sure there's a single one out there that is targeted at the audience of a NCE, an audience that wants a general overview of the criticism of Hamlet, one that you don't need a PhD to understand and that isn't centered on one issue or one point of view.

When you say it's at the same level of the text,

I mean that the table of contents for the Hamlet NCE did not label the other material as appendix material, nor did it label them with the same weight as the subdivisions of the text. The outline of the book given in the Table of Contents was not

I. Act 1
II. Act 2
III. Act 3
IV. Act 4
V. Act 5
VI. Intellectual Backgrounds

or Appendix A or whatever. It was

I. Text.
II. Intellectual Backgrounds
III. Extracts from the Sources
IV. Essays in Criticism

critical apparatus

Critical apparatus is "the variant readings, footnotes, etc. found in a scholarly work or a critical edition of a text". It doesn't mean a collection of criticism.

It may be that the critical apparatus as a whole is somehow elevated close to the same level (in importance(?) in the pages), but no individual piece within that critical apparatus is.

So? Hamlet + Sonnets is not Hamlet, even if no individual sonnet is that important.

Arguably, the original text is still the heart of the book, both in focus and in proportion.

More than half the text is not the original text. You have a 180 page book of criticism and comparative sources; that's a hell of a lot of submerge under another work.

What about the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings as one book? The Hobbit is less than a fourth the full text, and the Lord of the Rings is still the heart of the book, both in focus and in proportion. Why shouldn't we combine them?

Isn't this just semantics, though?

No. Introductions and appendices are explicitly subordinated by the publisher to the text. In the Norton Critical Edition, they're explicitly equals with the text.

I don't see much difference between that case and the NCE cases, except if it's just about number of pages.

It's not just about the number of pages, but surely that must be a factor. There's probably at least 100,000 pages of criticism about Hamlet; surely there is a point at which, if someone was publishing a book including Hamlet and criticism, that just on page count alone, you would have to admit that it wasn't the same work as Hamlet.

13: I just check the one critical edition that I own (because the professor made me), and sure enough, it had been separated from the main work. So I changed the title to match just the work, blanked the ISBN and it recombined with the main work. So there's an opt-out for those of us who want to be in with the cocktail party crowd.

I understand the impulse (and I'd probably be more inclined to consider my NCEs as the same "work" as other copies I own of the same books - and this is exactly why we have the work/editions distinction), but this is why I think we need a blanket rule/consensus, that people just stick to. Either they are, or they aren't, considered separate works, and that's that. If the consensus is to keep them separate, we keep them separate, in all cases. If the consensus is to combine them, we combine them, in all cases.

People opting out can create confusion. If I'm cleaning up a popular book, and I find that someone has combined books that contain BookA + Book B with copies of (just) Book A, it may well be that the members considered their book really to be Book A, and want it (though it is Book A and B) to be combined with all copies of Book A, but that's just not how LT works.

15: Usually they are specially commissioned essays which are not published anywhere else
Maybe in some of the NCEs, but not in the one I'm looking at. They all seem to be excerpts from previously published scholarly essays.

So having 300 pages of criticism and additional texts is not a reason to separate a book?
Well, that's the question I'm asking: Is it? Here I would consider the case of critical apparatus - however extensive - to be different from a case of a collection of stories or essays. If the contents of a short story collection are different from one copy to the next, they are different works (even if there's some overlap). If I have two copies of Hard Times, one that's a NCE with a 200+ core text and about the same number of pages after that of contextual and critical information, and one Penguin edition that's got the core 200+ text plus various paratexts totaling about 100 pages (an intro, chronology, suggestions for further reading, note on the text, appendices with the author's composition notes and running titles, and notes), why separate one and not the other? Is it the number of pages? Is it the specific content of the extra materials?

I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here. For my own reading purposes, I'm likely to consider them the same work, but I might choose a particular edition to read, buy, or use based on the quality of the additional material (intro, or essays, or appendix). But I'd do that even if comparing 2 cases both similar to the Penguin edition.

Off-topic: This is, I think, a different issue, but would a book with Hamlet + Sonnets XYZ in the title and contents be considered a different work from one called Hamlet, but with an Appendix that included Sonnets XYZ because they were somehow relevant to Hamlet?

Back to NCEs: I guess, for my own purposes, I just don't consider the additional material in the NCEs to be much different from a helpful appendix in any other edition, except in the sense that it's longer. I consider it secondary to the text itself. But that's just me. Clearly others think differently and have much stronger views on the matter than I do. Thanks for all the responses to hash these views out.

That's the difference I guess - when I buy one of the Critical editions of Shakespeare, it is for the additional materials, not for the play itself -- a Dover Thrift will give you the work. I can understand your point but I would say that we will need to agree to disagree on that.

There is a difference between normal appendages to works (introductions, notes, indexes, further readings, maps, extracts from other works from the author or from the times or from the publisher, chronologies, period explanations if needed and so on) and additional stuff (additional Critical essays for example- these are not merely contextual and critical information -- they are researches in the work, the author or the times). That's where I would draw the line usually as shifting as it can be... Once you have the latter, it turns into an anthology with the main work being 1 part of it and all the essays/additional sources being separate parts in themselves. NCE is one of these. Arden Shakespeare and Bedford Shakespeare is another (these are not separated and I was thinking on actually starting a thread to see what everyone thinks).

I think we need to postpone any decision to change the practice now until we have an actual contain/is part of functionality - because then all these extensive critical ones will get separated and the main work will be contained in them :) So I would leave the rule for NCE as it is for now... and see what the future brings us.

>18 rsterling:

Same set of sonnets exactly? If there is one different/missing in one of the books, we fall to story collections so they need to be separate. If they are the same, they would be the same work for me (considering that one of them does not contain way additional works and/or a variety of critical essays). And here of course comes the big issue in separating the latter from the main body of works :)

20 - Same set of sonnets exactly. My question there is whether it matters that the sonnets are relegated to an "appendix" in the one case, vs. part of the TOC in the other.

19> I was unfamiliar with Arden or Bedford Shakespeares, but if they have the same purpose as the NCE and Broadview, then I'm all for separating them.

But I'm not sure what the current NCE rule is - some are separated, some aren't, near as I can tell. At least, of the 7 currently in my catalogue... (and 2 are separated because I manually did the one when I was the first to add it and the other didn't autocombine on account of the author being different, not because of any kind of consensus)

If I have two copies of Hard Times, one that's a NCE with a 200+ core text and about the same number of pages after that of contextual and critical information, and one Penguin edition that's got the core 200+ text plus various paratexts totaling about 100 pages (an intro, chronology, suggestions for further reading, note on the text, appendices with the author's composition notes and running titles, and notes), why separate one and not the other?

The number of pages is one factor; 100 pages is a lot of text. And I think it is noteworthy the distinction between the material; all the stuff you mention in the Penguin edition is tightly tied to the text, and would be hard to publish elsewhere. On the other hand, most of the NCE material was published elsewhere, independent of the text, and sometimes before the text.

I buy the NCEs specifically for the additional material and have purchased NCEs of books I already own because these versions add something beyond most other editions. My most recent NCE, Sense and Sensibility, has other texts from the same time period, critical essays, and other supplementary material; I think this makes it different from other editions of Sense and Sensibility that generally only have an introduction and the text of the novel itself. It seems like the previous objections to combining NCEs are still valid. I don't think it makes sense to decide on a case-by-case basis; that seems like a recipe for combining and uncombining wars.

>21 rsterling:

Should not matter if you ask me :)

>22 keristars:
The basic rule is that NCEs are separated - at least that is what had been the basic idea...

Shakespeare's sets can be a bit... strange and I would think that this is the author where we need somewhat unique rules.

The Bedford Editions (subtitled Texts and Contexts) contain the plays and a huge number of related reading separated in different context areas -- mainly other works (parts only for the big part) but in such numbers that I would call it an anthology most of the time - I ave Othello here and you have the play - in ~130 pages and the cultural context works in 200+ pages - it is a lot similar to the Readers I had back in school -- where we had a main work to work on and then a huge selection of accompanying texts.

The Arden is considered a scholarly edition - a lot of additional information in it, commentary running together with the texts and so on. Of course here you have the added mess with the Second and Third series of the Ardens (different additional materials based on what the current times beliefs and understanding of Shakespeare had been.

Then you have of course the Variorum editions ( http://www.mla.org/store/CID38/PID8 for an example) which will be kinda strange to lump in the big one :)

Can all these be lumped together? Probably - they are now. But they are way too different in my view for them being together. But if that is what everyone thinks, well.. that is what it is :)

I don't care at all on this topic.

I only post to say that if someone wants me vote for their side, I can be bribed.

Just to make my position clear: Since I only own one NCE, I'm personally not that concerned about these. So I'm only addressing the matter of principle.

I think heavily annotated editions of works that are easily available in standard editions, and editions that contain much extra material, should be kept separate because they are likely to draw a very different readership - the same general idea as why to keep dead language editions separate.

Just to further the understanding of what's in the NCE's:

My NCE "Alice in Wonderland" first of all also contains "Through the Looking Glass" and "The Hunting of the Snark". Obviously that means it should never be combined with the standard "Alice". But there are other editions containing these three, and combining with those would remain an option.

It contains:

5 pages of introduction (pretty standard)
230 pages of those actual texts (annotated)
204 pages of additional material

So about 50% of the NCE (annotation + additional material) is not in a standard edition.

p.s.: there is also a revised / updated NCE Alice and the figures might be somewhat different for that one.

Yeah, that is my position also - these books have hundreds of editions - if you have one of the annotated and/or filled with critical essays and materials ones you either got it because of school or because you wanted the additional materials.

I believe the people that have them because of school want them combined (for them that is just Hamlet or whatever - they just have this edition and not another one because of school requirement).

PS: And the problem in your case is that because of the name, it can very easily be actually dumped into the main Alice one.

Yeah, I left a disambiguation notice.

Another reason I might want it combined if I owned one (which I don't), would be the convenience of seeing them together in the 'Work multiples'.

LT distinguishes between work and edition. I don't see why that is not enough.

I'm just reading Ovid's Metamorphoses. It happens to be a Norton Critical Edition. When I added it, one other person turned out to have a copy, and it was separate from the main Metamorphoses; I didn't know there was controversy so I just combined them. Annexed to the 408 page translation there are a 29 page foreword, 40 pages of excerpts from the likes of Hesiod, Seneca and Virgil to provide context for those unfamiliar with them, and four essays in 52 pages, all reprints. In my opinion that doesn't merit separation. It's no Charlotte Temple. I can't agree to a blanket rule to keep all NCE's separated.

29 if you have one of the annotated and/or filled with critical essays and materials ones you either got it because of school or because you wanted the additional materials.

Or because you wanted a specific translation of a non-English work, or were willing to pay extra for a reputable quality edition instead of a Dover Thrift kind of reprint.

Nope, LT does not really have the edition level - you have a book and a work level only. If we had the edition level, it would have been different - but just now all my Hamlets for example are lumped in the same work - with no way to differentiate between them on the work page.

Looks like it depends on the book - the Shakespeare NCEs contain a lot more than just the plays. The Metamorphoses sounds a bit different. But if are going to decide on a book to book bases, that will cause all type of issues...

rsterling said in 17 People opting out can create confusion. If I'm cleaning up a popular book, and I find that someone has combined books that contain BookA + Book B with copies of (just) Book A, it may well be that the members considered their book really to be Book A, and want it (though it is Book A and B) to be combined with all copies of Book A, but that's just not how LT works. People opting out can create confusion. If I'm cleaning up a popular book, and I find that someone has combined books that contain BookA + Book B with copies of (just) Book A, it may well be that the members considered their book really to be Book A, and want it (though it is Book A and B) to be combined with all copies of Book A, but that's just not how LT works.

Well, I got around this problem in much the same way I just opted out of the critical editions problem, by adding analytic records for each of the novels which combine with the single work. As long as you don't go sniffing around my catalog, you'll never know. So do whatever you want with critical editions, except looking at people's catalogs to see if maybe they're hiding information about extra essays.

There are lots of reasons why someone might have a critical edition and not care other than those already mentioned: they inherited it, it was cheap in a used bookstore, it was the cheapest Amazon edition, they had a sudden urge to read the work and this was the first edition they ran into in the bookstore, they thought they'd be interested in the notes, but found them tiresome ...

Clearly, some of us want to be in the main work and some of us don't. We're not going to solve that. Just separate them, but let people know somehow that if they want theirs combine with the main book, they'll have to disguise its true identity by moving the ISBN and true title to notes and putting the work title in title.

I own 19 Norton editions, Critical & Annotated. I put a note in the title: (Norton Critical)

Why I get NCE's: In my teens, I read Jane Eyre in an NCE from my local library (where I worked). Not only did it have extensive additional material, but it also footnoted archaic words that helped me understand why CB described things the way she did. It also translated the French phrases spoken by some of the characters. The essay about the changing point of view in the book opened my teen-aged eyes to how & why that was important... while it "broke a rule" but that it was important to the story. Other essays also helped, but that one "stuck."

After that, if a NCE edition is available for a book that I want to read, or re-read, I will chose it over another edition even if it costs more money.

Also, most, if not all, of the NCE's "works" are in the public domain.

If I want to read "Gulliver's Travels" I can go to Gutenberg & download it or read it there. But I don't. I am not a history major, or a political enthusiast or even someone who understands the nuances of satire. That doesn't mean that I don't want to know about it, just that I am uninformed. The NCE edition of GT has the information I need to get a greater understanding of what Jonathan Swift meant by what he was writing. GT is not a children's story. It is a political statement. If I read GT in a vanilla format, I will lose out. I will read a story that often doesn't make sense in many ways & will just seem like a cute story. I don't think that JS meant it to be a cute story.

Regarding the "contained in" proposal/beta/whatever: I'm not sure about this, but I think that I would prefer a "connected" reference. Would Gulliver's Travels NCE be "contained in" the Dover Thrift Edition or would the DTE be contained in the NCE??

Would the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer (NCE & not) be "contained in" my edition of "The Family Mark Twain"?? And what about other anthologies or collections? For these two works, the possibilities are practically endless? Are there going to be 500+ "contained in" references?? If so, what a mess!

(vote: NCE separate YES)

But surely saying the "work" - whatever brand - is contained in your NCE - as long as it's not an abridgement/adaptation of some sort - wouldn't be wrong?

35: I personally like the idea of those who want their critical editions separate adding something to the title (as you do), rather than my proposal in message 34 to have those of us who don't take something out.

However, those of us on this thread who want our critical editions combined with the main work seem to be in a minority, and I lean toward minorities doing extra work rather than majorities.

I believe the people that have them because of school want them combined (for them that is just Hamlet or whatever - they just have this edition and not another one because of school requirement).

they inherited it, it was cheap in a used bookstore, it was the cheapest Amazon edition, {...} they thought they'd be interested in the notes, but found them tiresome ...

These strike me as the least interesting of reasons. I own a copy of Sarte's No Exit, but it's not combined with the rest of the copies of Sarte's No Exit, because it's bound with three other of his plays. It was bought for school (where we read just the one play), it's the cheapest edition of No Exit on the market, and it's still kept separate from editions with just the one play. If someone actually thought they'd be interested in the non-No Exit pieces, that would even more of a reason to keep their copy with the larger book. (And let there be no doubt about it; this edition is No Exit; the rest of the book, in most cases, is filler to keep people from complaining about spending that much for one play.)

In cheap bookstores, I've also recently picked up two books by John M. Ford (can't name them and the titles didn't really matter), a TORG fiction book, and a copy of Othello for when I was going to see a performance, neatly packaged as Drama: an Introductory Anthology: Alternate Edition.

39 - I think those who lean toward combining probably consider the inclusion of critical material to be different in kind than the inclusion of additional primary texts. A book that contains several primary texts by an author - Aristophanes' The Birds, The Clouds, and The Lysistrata - should never be combined with just The Birds. JS Mill's On Liberty and other essays - where the other essays include 3 of his other most important works - should never be combined with On Liberty. I wouldn't think of doing so.

However, a copy of On Liberty plus critical material relevant to the book, or of The Birds plus critical material -- those I would be much more likely to favor combining with the work On Liberty, or the work The Birds. (I won't, of course, for NCEs and the like, if the consensus goes the other way.) But I think there's something different about the content (primary text + additional primary text vs. primary text + critical material for primary text), which is why we have this debate about NCEs and not about the other examples, and why some people don't mind so much if they're combined, but would mind if On Liberty and Other Essays were lumped with On Liberty.

39: You should read The Respectful Prostitute sometime. IMHO, it's much better than No Exit. (As you can see, I've listed all the plays separately so they can be properly combined, even though I own the same edition No Exit and Three Other Plays that you do.)

As long as the people who want them separate or the people who want them with the main work can get around the decision made here (either by adding information to the title or taking information out of the combining fields), I think it's not a problem. And, in fact, I think that it's the only way of solving the problem, since we're not going to convince each other.

Here's a thought... I haven't seen it before in this context, but maybe it's obvious and I'm not as original as I think: when the inclusion relationship (mostly useful for anthologies and such) eventually comes out of beta, it might automagically address the NCE issue. We'll just specify that "normal" editions of a work are included in the NCE one, and there you are, problem solved!

How does this sound to the other Combiners? I'm curious.

That's what I had been thinking - the NCEs (and pretty much any critical edition) is kind of an anthology :)

Do people who have seen the module think it will solve the problem? If so, I'm okay with that.

The Contains/Contained code is not very complete. You can create the relationships, i.e. you can say that work A is contained in work B, or that B contains A and C, or whatever, and that works fine. But -- that's all there is so far. The system doesn't actually use that information for any sort of social connections, or recommendations, or anything.

I'd say that it is absolutely possible and correct to say that NCE Huck Finn contains Huck Finn. But, as yet, that doesn't solve the problem.

>45 r.orrison:
It doesn't solve the problem _yet_. But maybe by the time it gets out of beta, it will?

46: In the meantime the critical editions can be separated, and those of us who want part of the anthology combined with on the work page can use the workarounds for parts of anthologies that we're using now.

Why are some NCE's in the publisher series, and some not?

and is the Contains information used on the social side of the site by now?

>48 JerryMmm:

Because noone added them.
Nope, it is... just there. Not used for anything

49: Not used for anything programmatically. I personally use it a lot.

>50 aulsmith:

OK :) - correction - LT does not use it in any feature - social or not.

Remind me, please: Are NCEs moving from Series to Publisher Series, or vice versa?

I asked mainly because there are 2 series, one normal and one publisher, and the first few I looked at in the normal were removed from publisher by eromsted.

Having gotten the NCE of Alice I can now form a more educated opinion on the NCE debate. But I'm still unsure about a lot of issues.

I think the problem is that there isn't a hard rule for NCEs. Some of them have enough extra material (often extra short stories) to make them separate works and sometimes the extras just amount to footnotes which don't justify separating them. If they were all separated from them main work then you could put them all in a Series but they aren't so you can only but the ones that are separated into a Series, the rest have to be put in a Publisher Series. Actually, I wouldn't bother with the Series at all and just put them all into a Publisher Series.

These were the separated works that were NCE's.

http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?item=26990&type=1&...

for example, eromsted removed it from the publisher series
http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Norton+Critical+Editions

and

http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?item=6765363&type=...

Just wondering what's going on here.

Yes, this half-completed project is my fault. I was entering sthe contributing author information in the "other authors" section of some of the NCEs when I noticed that many of the NCEs have gone through several editions. Moreover, those different editions can have significantly, or even completely, different sets of critical essays. So I started pulling apart the NCEs by edition, checking the contributors, adding them under other authors, and adding disambiguation notices.

I was also moving the works out of publishers series and back to regular series. If the NCEs are separate from their main works then they are a series and should be organized under that field. But I was using this move from publishers to regular series to mark my progress in the edition disambiguation - author addition project.

Well, the whole thing became a very large task and I got bored and distracted and shifted to other projects. My place-marking certainly need not be respected and I would not object to someone moving the rest of the NCEs back to the regular series field.

So the regular series would be the correct series, because the NCE's are their own works now?
(trying to understand the rationale)

I've added the following to the description of the series:

The Norton Critical Editions contain the original work plus additional material like short stories and reviews and critical essays etc.

Since they're separated from the original works, and Norton has the monopoly on the Norton Critical Editions, they are a series, not a Publisher Series.

Comments?

The whole point of creating the publishers series field was to have a place to put series information that does not apply to all of the books combined together in the LT work. Not every copy of The Charterhouse of Parma is a Modern Library Classic edition so that information should not go in the series field. But every copy in a NCE work should be an NCE edition so that information should go in the series field.

If some are separated and some not, only the separated ones can be in series. It seems to me that there is good reason to have all of them in publishers series, even if some of them are also in series.

>60 MarthaJeanne:
If any are not separated then those should be separated and the new NCE work should have the series data.

61> Only if someone can verify that there actually is enough additional information to make it a separate work. Some footnotes and an essay or two that have never been published separately don't make it a separate work.

On the other hand, you say that you were creating new works out of different editions of the same NCEs. If that's a valid thing to do (and note that you can enter that an author contributed information to just *some* editions of a work) then how can you have just one NCE series?

#62: Why can't you have just one NCE series? There are many series that have a list of works and then one of the middle books got revised while continuing adding on. King Kobold was written as part of a decent sized science fiction series, and later the author decided to rewrite it as King Kobold Revived. Splitting a whole series because one book got revised is silly if there was no intent to start a new series.

I suppose. But having a Series where each book is repeated 2 or 3 or 5 times because of different editions sounds pretty messy.

If you can find such a series (and I certainly can't think of one), it certainly would be a very messy series. If the NCE is producing completely new works (instead of touching up old ones to get new sales to college students and whatnot), they're spending a lot of money to fix something that should have been done right in the first place.

65> If the NCE is producing completely new works (instead of touching up old ones to get new sales to college students and whatnot), they're spending a lot of money to fix something that should have been done right in the first place.

eromstead in 56 above said exactly that. I just took his word for it.

>65 prosfilaes:,66
I can't tell you why Norton updates the books in this series. But I can tell you that the editions typically come out several decades apart. These are not like textbook editions with minor changes every other year. My guess is that the new editions are intended to reflect changes in critical interpretation that have occurred since the last edition appeared.

#67: Fair enough. I'm betting it's usually the more important works, though; it's not every book repeated multiple times, and rarely will one book have more then 2 editions, maybe three for the oldest and most important. I was thinking of the Leob's (publisher series, though) that are getting whole new editions for quite a few of their books, but that's for books that originally came out at least 50 years ago.

>67 eromsted:
Yep, new scholarship mainly and new works that better fit with the new scholarship for that particular title.

Pretty similar to the Arden Shakespeare or any other of the big series that contain critical apparatus.

> 56: I would not object to someone moving the rest of the NCEs back to the regular series field.

Would that be a help? If so, I think some of us may be all over it. After all, of the 330 NCE Works resulting from a Site Search (at last count -- just now), 129 are in the Publisher's Series, and 41 in a regular Series. We could get that knocked out PDQ, unless we also need the otherr stuffs done at the same time. It's the other 160+/- that have-yet-to-be-identified that'll likely get to be stultifying ... .

67> But is the material things like short stories that have been published elsewhere, or is it more like appendices which are usually not considered enough to make it a separate edition.

>70 jasbro:
The only advantage to my slow process is that I was also checking whether the editions were combined properly in general, that is whether there were stray NCE copies in other works, and also whether any other CK data was entered incorrectly for an NCE edition. I think it's a good idea to make sure the works are clean before entering them in the series. But that is significantly less work than all of my contributing author additions.

>71 jjwilson61:
If you really want to know, check the NCE titles on the Norton website. Most of the titles have a link to a page with the complete contents listed (note that sorted by date, the default, the top few prepublication titles do not have a contents link).

>71 jjwilson61:

Depends on the edition. In most of them there are stories and articles published elsewhere (including from the same era the work is from). The NCEs are more anthologies with the work as a center than the work

#71: I'd rather just separate all the NCEs, instead of fighting over every one. It usually not appendices; it's usually independent literary criticism or other fictional material.

> 72: Question, then -- would there be any advantage in somebody going ahead and adding Series CK for the 125 currently in the Publisher Series, which can might be "de(Publisher)Serialized" as they're checked for proper combining, stray copies in other works, and other incorrect CK data? Or are you making progess as it is? Seems to me the PS is already down by some, and the Series up, since I checked a few days ago.

Next question, then -- how can we best help with NCEs NOT currently included in the Series or Publisher Series? Seems it would be easiest to add them to Series, or at least tell quickly whether they're already there; but then we still have problem(s) of combining, stray copies, and CK clean-up for those too.

> 74: Ditto. And the same for Bedfords, and Ardens, and etc. But then I really get into distinctions, anxiously awaiting the promised "Editions & Expressions."