What’s your method of choosing specific editions of classics?

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