Robert Louis Stevenson?

I'm new to this group (new to LibraryThing in general), so I'm not sure if this is an appropriate topic. If not, just let me know. I'm a huge Robert Louis Stevenson fan and have several first editions and limited editions. I believe I have two Folio Society Stevenson titles (Travels with a Donkey in the Cervennes, The Beach of Falesá), and now I'm thinking of acquiring the other Stevenson titles. I'm wondering if it's a common practice among Folio Society fans--to collect only one or two authors' works. Or am I the odd one out with this sort of thing?

>1 mdcall: based on your post in the fine press group, I suspect your degree of commitment might be a few standard deviations out from the mean (400 copies of one title!). But focusing on an author or title is a not uncommon approach, I think (I've seen quite a few examples of this, especially in collectors of contemporary genre works: Tolkien, Stephen King, Dune, Neuromancer, and Oz all immediately spring to mind).

For my own case, one of my personal collecting rules is to avoid having multiple copies of the same title, but with a few exceptions where I explicitly seek out multiples for titles or authors that speak to me. This is at least partly a matter of pragmatism (funds, shelf space, and appreciation time being all limited).

So my list of such exceptions is small. For authors and titles, Dante (especially the Commedia), Paradise Lost, Shakespeare, Blake, Goethe. Nietzsche, though there aren't really enough distinctive editions for it to matter in his case. There are also a few printers and book designers on my list, though that probably wouldn't register as redundancy for a lot of collectors.

Even for multiple copies of the same title on my short list, the main criterion is still whether I can actually appreciate something unique about the particular edition, whether it is design, translation, illustrations, etc. It can never just be marking off something on a checklist (though no shade if that provides satisfaction for someone else).

I'm with abysswalker - one of each with rare exceptions. There are too many good books and too little shelf space to double up, or triple, or whatever the term would be for 400.

I only have multiples if it's a translated work that warrants it.

>1 mdcall: I'm a big Stevenson fan, and have a number of his works, but not really Limited Editions.

In terms of The Folio Society, I have:
Travels With Robert Louis Stevenson: An Inland Voyage; In the South Seas; Across the Plains. 3 vol. set 2004
Treasure Island 1994
Catriona 2006
The Master of Ballantrae 2006
Kidnapped 2006
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Weir of Hermiston 2006
The Isle of Voices and Other Stories 2007
The Body-Snatcher and Other Stories 2007
Treasure Island 2014
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1994
The Amateur Emigrant & The Silverado Squatters 1991
Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes 1967

I think the essence of "collecting" is your own rather arbitrary satisfaction from whatever it is you like to collect. As noted above, when the original is in an unknown foreign language it's not uncommon to have more than one translation of a favorite work or author. Multiple copies of the same work in English? If it floats your boat I see no problem, especially if there are distinguishing features like introductory matter, notes or illustrations.

Regarding Stevenson, when I was in elementary school I first read Treasure Island in an edition from the school library with the illustrations of N.C. Wyeth, and I never forgot it or them. Years later I bought an Easton Press edition, but I was never happy with its illustrations and eventually sold it. Then one day in a local book store I found, not only a different Easton Press edition with the Wyeth illustrations, but a companion volume, Kidnapped, also with Wyeth's illustrations. I think both are incomparably good adventure stories, but his mastery of Scottish and pirate dialect is what sets them apart for me:

"There ain't a thing left here," said Merry, still feeling round among the bones, "not a copper doit nor a baccy box. I don't look nat'ral to me"

"No, by gum, it don't," agreed Silver; "not nat'ral, nor nice, says you. Great guns! messmates, but if Flint was living this would be a hot spot for you and me. Six they were, and six are we; and bones is what they are now."

I have well over 30 recordings of Mack the Knife. It was, I believe, the most recorded song of the 20th century.

>7 Cardboard_killer:
Computer says no. "Yesterday"

>7 Cardboard_killer:
Do you have a favorite?

>8 SimB: I assume Christmas carols are excluded from the tally. There have to be a blue million covers of some of those, judging by what I hear in stores after Thanksgiving Halloween Labor Day.

>9 sdawson: Ella in Berlin. But for more recent versions, I think The Brian Setzer Orchestra was a kinda perfect sound. Perhaps singularly, I've never been happy with Bobby Darrin's cut. The Doors did it live, and that's pretty good for a rock band, better than the Grateful Dead's version anyway.

>8 SimB: But what does it say today?

>11 Cardboard_killer: If the version is unfamiliar, check out Marianne Faithfull's take on the song. It's on an album called 20th Century Blues where she does a whole raft of great Kurt Weill covers. Definitely one voice that belied the norm and kept on improving with age.

>7 Cardboard_killer: I'm quite fond of a Rufus Wainwright & Pacific Jazz Orchestra recording I just stumbled over, I only wish it was all in German:

https://open.spotify.com/track/4qmYDdVA3zYPPejNjHOwnh?si=83a0507c10e24efe

>13 duncjl: Thank you awfully; what an album!