On editions of novels

[pretty_plant]

Why are synopses of older novels on Amazon etc...so very useless?

They always summarize the plot and go on and on about how amazing the books are but never touch on the version of the books that are included in the novel. Older books tended to be revised by the authors, editors, family members, etc...so I really want to know which version of the novel I am reading. The synopses absolutely fail to give me this information and I need to read the damned introduction, editor's intention, etc...to figure out what I will actually be reading.

Comments

[logonaut]

Interesting dilemma. As someone who hasn't read an "older book" since my school days (when we had to read the classics), I didn't know there was so much variation between different editions.

[pretty_plant]

Yeah, if a book had some controversial details, they tended to be sanitized in later editions.

[regshoe]

Huh, what books have you found where this is a problem? I definitely know some where there are multiple very different versions/editions and summaries don't always make clear which a book is, but I wouldn't have said it was a very common thing. (Am I missing lots of cases??)

[pretty_plant]

Lol, I was trying to find an edition of Richardon's Pamela and got frustrated. I did later find out that the Oxford version had the first edition while the Penguin one incorporated all of the revisions Richardson made.
But I feel like specifying about the edition a book has is something that tends to happen more with more scholarly books with a lot of footnotes, endnotes, a glossary, and a reference list. Books meant for the casual readers don't really mention that.
Here is a link I found with this issue: https://www.amazon.com/Pamela-Virtue-Rewarded-Samuel-Richardson/dp/1081426942/132-6664935-9028248?pd_rd_w=UzNOJ&content-id=amzn1.sym.081392b0-c07f-4fc2-8965-84d15d431f0d&pf_rd_p=081392b0-c07f-4fc2-8965-84d15d431f0d&pf_rd_r=YDATCCC7QY49GP9X2HAE&pd_rd_wg=6V0Ot&pd_rd_r=1ef6abe0-3d7b-480c-902c-b1d75e1a8a85&pd_rd_i=1081426942&psc=1

Yeah, I know it was a bad link. I never manage to master the art of sending short Amazon links.

[regshoe]

Funnily enough, I've just today run into a similar problem of different editions with another book, The Adventures of David Simple by Sarah Fielding—not identifying which edition a given book is, but just trying to find a usable copy of the edition I wanted. (Apparently Fielding's brother edited the book to 'correct' her grammar and remove most of her em dashes—I disapprove!) Anyway, yeah, it is very annoying when those 'casual reader' editions don't give you important information about the book.

(btw, you can do links on Dreamwidth like this, and make them as short as you want: <a href="www.urlgoeshere.com">link text goes here</a>)

[pretty_plant]

Thanks for the advice.

Maybe Fielding's brother anticipated many modern readers would consider em dashes usage to be AI a century before the invention of AI and removed them so his sister was free from unwanted accusations?

I do wish casual reader editions give you more information about the editions because I sometimes just want to read a book with only the text of the book without any notes, a long introduction and a reference list. Some scholarly editions just have too many footnotes, I believe. I read one of the Oxford editions of some of Jane Austen works and while reading, I believed that many of the footnotes were both long and unnecessary.

I believe that this quote from Chekhov's "A Boring Story" captures my feelings perfectly: "It oppresses me to read not only the articles written by serious Russians, but even works translated or edited by them. The pretentious, edifying tone of the preface; the redundancy of remarks made by the translator, which prevent me from concentrating my attention; the question marks and "sic" in parenthesis scattered all over the book or article by the liberal translator, are to my mind an outrage on the author and on my independence as a reader."

It is technically about translation but I do believe it can apply to scholarly works in general.

[regshoe]

Maybe Fielding's brother anticipated many modern readers would consider em dashes usage to be AI a century before the invention of AI and removed them so his sister was free from unwanted accusations?

XD

Yeah, the footnotes and extra information can be interesting sometimes but they can also be a bit of a distraction, especially when I'm reading the book for the first time and just want to be immersed in the story! (Sometimes I save the footnotes to read after each chapter, rather than stopping to read them as they appear, as a compromise.)