Oxford World Classics, Penguin Classics, Norton Critical Editions—the choices are endless. So how do you choose?
**Questions to consider:**
1. What kind of reading experience do you prefer: free exploration or guided-walkthrough?
2. Do aesthetics/quality of the physical book matter? (i.e. cover, paper quality, font, size, etc.)
3. Do your edition preferences vary with genre and literary period?
4. For translated works, does the edition matter more than the translation itself?
For myself, the more complex a text is or the less I know about the relevant history and culture, the more I gravitate towards editions like Norton (or some Oxford editions). But I’ll be honest, I very seldom choose this route.
* A text like *Beowulf* requires a lot of background information in order to fully appreciate it. Reading the articles at the back of the Norton Critical Edition was something that illuminated aspects of the text I would have never considered myself.
* That being said, even with very dense texts like *War and Peace*, I wanted to go about understanding this text through my own perspective. I used the Oxford World Classics which gave me the option to look at the explanatory notes in the back of the text, but otherwise left the experience untainted. I ended up filling the margins, taking notes on the blank pages, even mapping out battle scenes and military movements on the maps they provided. I watched adaptations of the book, found commentary online, explored the philosophy behind free will v. determinism. I made my own journey, and it was probably one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had with a novel.
So, for me, I want as much independence with a text as I can, without sacrificing my ability to understand the text. Norton Critical Editions are wonderful, but I definitely have more Penguin Classics on my shelf.
I’d love to hear from you all 🙂
by benbojammin
26 Comments
If I’m going to read a classic (I don’t really enjoy them, I struggle with the language), I’m going to buy the penguin cloth bound classic because they are CUTE. Like, if I’m reading something I’m not excited about, I’m going to find a way to make myself excited and that seems like the best way. (Well … I’ll usually buy the physical copy and then read the ebook anyways because I prefer it).
I’m obsessed with them haha. If I ever get lucky enough to decorate a spare room with books, I hope to have as many as I can!
probably cheapest in paperback that’s not some terrible rando
dover is cheap penguin comes to mind
edit: i guess my point is that i dont worry about any of the stuff you brought up and mostly dont think it matters. im interested in the content of the book. this isnt talmud where every word matters.
Honestly I just stick with Penguin for classics because I like how consistent, nice, and clean all their covers are. I know some people have very strong opinions about translations, but as a layman who’ll probably only read a book once and prioritizes accessibility, Penguin suits me just fine.
Honestly, if I’m buying a classic, I look for the same thing I do in a regular book- a copy that’s in decent shape and relatively cheap at my local used book store.
This does occasionally come back to bite me. My copy of The Old Man and the Sea was printed in India, and EVERY SINGLE instance of ‘rn’ in a word was printed as ‘m’. It was like r/keming, and it drove me nuts!
I choose them almost exclusively because of aesthetics. The biggest factor is that, personally, I don’t usually like the covers with people on them, even the paintings. I prefer simpler covers. I really like the Penguin English Library collection for that reason. I’m not so picky that I need all of my classics to be the same edition, but I do like to purchase all of one author in the same edition. For example, Barnes and Noble has a “signature classics” collection that I collected all of Jane Austen’s books in.
Generally I don’t much care, as long as the work is unabridged. If it’s a translation, I may be a little pickier, based on the relative merits of different English versions.
Hmm, I guess I have a kind of arbitrary system that’s held over from my time as a student.
– Dover: I’m looking for a cheap copy of a book that’s not really all that interesting to me, but I’d like it to be decent quality and have some thought to any criticism in the introduction. The definition of cheap and cheerful, and absolutely nothing wrong with ’em.
– Penguin: My old reliable. Aesthetically pleasing, consistent quality, usually has great criticism and notes throughout. This is also where I tend to buy my translations because I feel like Penguin, especially Penguin Classics, has always delivered solid work.
– Oxford World Classics: A little more ‘head’y and rigorous, this is the copy I’m buying because I want to understand a novel with a slightly greater depth than usual.
More niche, but for Shakespeare I usually do RSC, pocket editions, or Arden depending on how serious I am about the play.
I also *really* love weird paperbacks (think the kind you’d see from, like, 1955 through 1995) and will totally buy without rhyme or reason when I see a classic with a cool old paperback cover.
ed.: I’ll also add that for something like *Beowulf* or Homer, I might do some light research now to see what’s new because the conversation is ever-evolving and how we receive a text changes with the times. There are older editions (Heaney, Fagles) that I’ve read, but also newer, more modern approaches (Headley, Wilson) that I’ve engaged with as a result.
I judge all editions of books I purchase based on one simple metric.
“Which one looks closest to the tomes at the end of *The Pagemaster*?”
It has yet to let me down.
Certainly there is a difference I’ve noticed a lot of translations are very different when I try to listen to an audiobook as I’m reading it can really get pretty bad so that was a question that I honestly had as well.
I think people suggested penguin and that is what I go for but it’s definitely a lot more to literature than just looking at the book covers.
my current reading is Madame Bovary translation by Lydia Davis : I’m hard pressed to find any audio versions of this as of yet.
I don’t care much unless it’s a translation…. especially of a long book with several options available! I did a bunch of research to choose my translations of Tolstoy. Most classics I don’t much care, though I do prefer to avoid the ones that have pointless spoilery endnotes like “X painfully revises her views on this topic after A and B die.” I can read the book and see that for myself, asshole.
Varies on a book to book basis. Sometimes the translation is what seals the deal, sometimes its the annotations, sometimes its illustrations, and sometimes its just cover art or format. I don’t read many classics so i don’t have a big collections that i would want to look uniform or anything of the sort. I just do my research or translations etc. and pick the 1 that fits the most criteria.
Ulysses is another book where the Norton edition is hugely helpful.
When I buy classical literature it’s more to collect than to read (I prefer an e-reader), so I’m mostly looking for quality and appearance – something that looks good and will last. I like Leather-bound Classics for this reason.
I like the Library of America editions. If not available, I usually look at the quality of the print, font, etc. How easy is it to read the printed page.
It depends on if I plan to read it and how many times. One read through? I’ll likely look for a pretty edition since it’ll be a bookshelf ornament. Multiple reads? Needs to be sturdy
If there’s a Norton edition, I try go for that if I can find used. If not, I’m usually hunting for old printings as cheaply as possible or reading an ebook I may or may not have found on the open seas.
I’m at the point in my life where I’m buying Folio Society editions of books I first read as Penguin editions 20+ years ago or as library books 30+ years ago, or from my parents’ collection. Back when I was studying I bought the recommended edition where appropriate, though if reading for fun I borrowed the best laid-out version (if there was a choice). 25 years ago I lucked into a good source of very cheap Everyman editions, too.
I don’t bother with paperbacks any more, pretty much. Kindle for practicality, Folio for aesthetics.
I choose whatever is in the library, and if it’s a translation, I look at the publisher. Some are better in translations than others.
I mostly read classics just for the actual story so i know i won’t bother to read all the extra content usually. I like the penguin english library paperbacks because the covers are colourful and definitely dont have some weird painting on them. Other than that I have gotten the normal penguins. I am curious to try out the oxford ones and i also like the look of the B&N classics.
If it’s a translated work I’ll generally look for opinions, usually on Reddit, and try pick a translation based on those. Otherwise I just look for a version that has Audible and Kindle whispersync so I can easily switch between listening and reading.
If not translated literature- then I look for the version that I’m most likely to read due to the size of the font/ prettiness of the cover etc
For translated classics, I tend to look for the translation that will most get me to read the book tbh .. or the one that most recommended.
So yes … asthetics do matter to some extent but so does the content.
Having said that, I shelled out and bought the entire range of the gorgeous Vintage Russian classics on account of how beautifully they were presented.
I go with the one my library has.
I do like black cover Penguin classics best. Decent translation, good essay at the front, lots of end notes, which I love.
Oxford classics have a few titles that Penguin doesn’t, so I have a few. And I do like historical books like the old everyman series, and the first ever Penguin blue covers.
Things I hate: the modern trend for colourful covers, especially the ones designed for sorted by colour bookshelves. Daft idea. As are hugely expensive folio editions of classics. I really dont get the desire to pay £££ for a heavy hardback when you can have a nice paperback. Maybe it’s because I have a bad arm and can’t hold them for long.
1. Free exploration always. I like there to be an Introduction and even some critical essays but these always get read at the very end and usually because I am sad the book is over and want to find some way of continuing my involvement.
2. Aesthetics of the book, in general, do not matter. However I am always more pleased to have found an old second hand version than something newly printed. Really bad covers will put me off particularly if they reference some film or TV show that has dramatized the book or have some “special offer” or “NYT Top 100” non removable sticker on the front.
3. I like to get an edition that is as close to the first edition as I can – even though that may still be a long way away from it. I love Green Penguins (paperbacks from the 1950s) for detective and mystery and some of the lurid pulpy type cover art for books for post war paperbacks – particularly science fiction. For novels from before the paperback era then anything will do – the cheapest possible but a nice old foxed hardback would be much better.
4. For foreign texts then the translation is the main criterion. I like to find translations that are close to the author and to their time. A lot of modern translations I don’t like because they try to put, say, 1920s German into modern English – I would be happier with 1920s English. The exception to this is ancient texts e.g. Homer, Herodotus, etc. Here an 1820 translation is no more “authentic” than a 2020 translation so the newer ones are better.
Highly recommend norton critical editions for books that are 150+ years old. Currently reading Moby Dick and the footnotes are saving me so much time that I would have to spend googling phrases, names of places, people, etc. that just aren’t commonly known anymore.
Pretty? Yes? No?
That’s literally the extent of it for me.