Some Thoughts upon Completion of First Draft of GRHAPTISA+² HOEWAG Master List
I’ve finished the first draft of my Homer-Hemingway GRHAPTISA+² HOEWAG Master List.
I used the Mortimer Alder canon here and searched for the critical editions for titles.
Here’s what I observed:
- Many scientific works are still poorly served, with only reprints of old public domain editions as “independently published” books on Amazon, e.g. Max Planck. However, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology now has a University of Chicago Press three-volumes edition.
- The Oxford World’s Classics series are the best critical editions in my experience as rule of thumb. I would recommend them over Penguin Classics.
- Many famous writers have a whole university press series devoted to every last scrap. These are typically very expensive for most people. However, PDFs are available in the usual places online.
- There are secondhand DVDs and MP3s for films, readings and audio dramatisations for many works of fiction, as well as copies online too.
- In my opinion, the best critical editions for Dante’s Divine Comedy is the three-volumes by Durling published by Oxford University Press. For Shakespeare, it has to be the Arden series.
I will revise the List and add dates for authors, divisions of periods, and so on. It will be a lot of work to add links to online versions, and I inclined not to devote the effort to that. Eager individuals can do that themselves with Anna’s Archive and Internet Archive.