Ten Wordsworth Classics I Can't Live Without

[@brenboothjones]

What are your most beloved classics? Got any Wordsworth classics? Ps. Here is a review I wrote for Open Letters of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan! openlettersreview.com/posts/lady-susan-by-jane-austen

[@ToReadersItMayConcern]

You get to read and share all sorts of wonderful books with your son and that is a beautiful thought. The Wordsworth, the Penguins, the Faber and Faber... A remarkable selection for a growing mind!

[@brenboothjones]

I’m going to savour every moment of it!

[@Thetrilingualreader]

Absolutely adore wordsworth. My favourite of the ones I own is Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol and they use Isabel Hapgood's translation whereas the most common translation is the Hogarth one but in my humble opinion I prefer Hapgood's translation. From what i've seen it is more dynamic and captures the humour of Gogol and the ridiculous characterization better and all thanks to wordsworth it is my favourite book of the year despite it being an unfinished work. I find the hogarth one a bit more stiff and rigid. Also thanks for the reminder not to read the jane austen omnibus in bed. Mine is canterbury classics and it is a huge hardcover it can break my nose 😂 You also reminded me of the golden age by Grahame that I have had it buried in my bookshelf and forgotten. My friend found it in a flea market in portugal and it is so old it doesn't say who is the publisher except at the end "printed in great britain at the press of the publishers". You put it again on my radar, thank you. Your child won't forget these memories by the way just like I don't forget the ones my mom made for me. You are doing a great job ❤.

[@brenboothjones]

Gosh, thank you for the wonderful comment! This is the kind of response that makes booktube so rewarding. I love to hear about other people’s reading experiences. Have you read Nabokov’s short biography of Gogol? It’s thrilling stuff (available in Penguin modern classics). Translation is so important, isn’t it? I should be more vocal about naming translators and discussing translation variance. So thank you for reminding me of that! The most disconcerting divergences I’ve found have been between translations of the Iliad (I secretly prefer Alexander Pope’s rhymed couplets to some of the more recent authoritative translations) and Don Quixote. Also the poems of Tomas Tranströmer! Funny what you say about that random unidentifiable publisher! I have (rather fittingly) a Sherlock Holmes book without a publisher’s name in it lol. Thanks for sharing and for the encouragement! ✨

[@Thetrilingualreader]

@@brenboothjones (just downloaded the Gogol biography lesssgoooo). Translation is sooooo important. My friend read don quixote in the original spanish and tells me it absolutely doesn't compare in english, a lot of the humour is lost. I am reading Monte Cristo in the original french while my friends read the translation. At first, they started with the chapman translation and I started noticing differences. Chapman translation abridges the prose which is the most important thing in Dumas's work so I had them switch to Buss's translation but it is more "modern" and it means they find it 'easy and fast paced' to read while I am stuck in the French reading the 20th enumeration of a random weapon 😭 so they finished before me. Absolutely would not sacrifice this experience at all though, the prose is absolutely fantastic in french even if i find the plot pacing to be weird. So I do appreciate the effort wordsworth puts in for finding these translations even if it means not using the more "common" ones and for that price! Btw, i also read le petit prince pour la première fois as an adult. When i was a kid, I had the Comtesse de Ségur children's classics. Les malheurs de sophie is my favourite. She is very popular for children here in lebanon (at the time i grew up).

[@brenboothjones]

@ I hope you enjoy the Gogol biography! Aargh nothing worse than abridged versions. Happy reading! :)

[@belindabramfitt8721]

Hi Bren, I appreciate this vog on Wordsworth Classics so much. I love them. I have collected them for many years, in their variously changing covers. I also love the fact that they started off as a family business and are still a small firm, focusing on selling books to schools. I was very interested by your comments about Robinson Crusoe. I studied this as part of degree course on 18th century literature and wrote a paper focusing on this and Swift's Gulliver's Travels, contrasting the authors' attitudes towards global expansionism through trade and colonization and its moral and political consequences. To my mind, Gulliver is a very powerful and significant book but people have to be careful which edition to buy because there are so many abridged versions around. The Wordsworth Editions are always unabrided.

[@brenboothjones]

Hi! Thank you so much :) yes Swift is the sophistication and satire to Defoe’s simple earnestness. Very interesting to compare them! Didn’t know they were a small family-run enterprise! I do love that they make affordable editions with a focus on school curriculums. Going to look up the publisher’s history. Thanks for the prompt.

[@strange.lucidity]

Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep sweateranalogy-desires!

[@brenboothjones]

The eye wink at the hand-made sweater ;)

[@sihamwh]

Hi!😊 great video.

[@brenboothjones]

Hello! Thank you:)

[@AlexATheEngineer]

love your commentary about eventually sharing with your son all the wonderful books you grew up with! those are fantastic picks, i also have Le Petit Prince amongst the mix in mine - specifically a hardcover edition in French with the beautiful color illustrations. you're right that childhood characters one reads when younger are like old, old friends. cheers!

[@brenboothjones]

Thank you, Alexa! I think I had the same edition of Le Petit Prince.

[@TheLinguistsLibrary]

I think your Jane Austen edition has gone out of print-sadly for the rest of us. Oh well, there’s always a chance I’ll find it at a thrift store. And I agree, Wordsworth editions are super readable-I love the floppy pages!

[@brenboothjones]

The serendipitous discovery of some long looked-for edition is one of the delights of rummaging through flea markets and secondhand bookshops. I hope you find an Austen omnibus some day :)

[@GM-j7c]

The thing I remember most about the novel Robinson Crusoe is that it's an exciting story of survival and adaptation to a strange environment. Jane Austen's novels have excellent plots that keep the reader wondering. Her satiric viewpoint is precise and funny while she gently skewers English society ( and human nature ) in its weakness and eccentricity.

[@brenboothjones]

Thanks for sharing! I have discussed both Robinson Crusoe and most of Austen’s novels on my channel in earlier vids.

[@Noortjestortelder]

🎉🎉🎉

[@brenboothjones]

✨✨✨

[@miumiu7326]

Modern Wordsworth classics covers are truly horrible. I always search for older editions. However, as you said, they are affordable and have a huge variety of authors and genres. My most precious book by Wordsworth is Canterbury Tales, it’s annotated and light so I can carry it everywhere with me.

[@brenboothjones]

Ah nice-I’ve got the Oxford World Classics Canterbury Tales. Truly an essential!

[@ToReadersItMayConcern]

Haha, wow, that is a horrible cover! I had to pause and stare a while to realize it's not just a person in a suit.

[@brenboothjones]

Weird how it was actually approved for printing. It looks like a bad day in MS Paint!