Barnes & Noble Free Classic eBooks Program Starts

[Seabound]

I don't think these B&N editions have any "notes on the text" in which the editors state what their copy-text is and the revisions they have made. Unlike, say the Penguin or Oxford editions. It's what I like about Penguin or Oxford. Having said that, I have just downloaded this week's FREE B&N editions.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Seabound

I don't think these B&N editions have any "notes on the text" in which the editors state what their copy-text is and the revisions they have made. Unlike, say the Penguin or Oxford editions. It's what I like about Penguin or Oxford.

Me too, but that's why the Penguin eBooks cost £7.99 . Hard to argue with FREE (although some seem to want to ).

[MaggieScratch]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Are the 'changes' you mention in the DP books, or those from other public domain sources ?

It depends what edition DP is proofing from. The only criteria (as far as I know) for PG is to use an edition in the public domain. They don't require first editions (a good thing, as first edition of Austen go for five figures!) so an edition published in 1910 will qualify and yet have modernized spelling. (Austen's books, for those who don't know, were first published between 1811 and 1818. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park also had second editions within Austen's lifetime. She died in 1817. The last two books, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, were published after her death.)

My understanding of most editions with pretensions to scholarship is that they will work from an early edition, often the first edition, or a manuscript if available (they are not available for the six major novels by Jane Austen).

There are pitched arguments among Austen scholars about whether changes between first and second editions were intentional by the author or whether a know-it-all printer put them in, and which edition a definitive text should be based upon (this assumes editions printed in Austen's lifetime, of course). I mean, big arguments with letters to the Times Literary Supplement. It's pretty hilarious, actually. My own, rather pragmatic, idea is that Austen was writing in a time before English spelling and syntax had become standardized (see, chuse, shew, "which was carrying down the stairs," etc.), and moreover she had a lifetime problem with the concept of "i before e except after c," so we all need to chillax.

ETA: There is the possibility of mistakes being introduced, however: the Signet editions have a significant error in Pride and Prejudice. The famous quote by Mr. Bennet, "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?" is changed to "For what do we live, but to make sport of our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?" This mistake changes the whole meaning of the sentence, and from some crowdsourced investigation proves to have been propagated over several Signet editions and at least one Bantam and one Tor edition (there might be some editorial sharing there, I think). I did a post at my blog about it: http://austenblog.com/2007/07/20/fri...-r-us-edition/