A hundred and twenty dollars?
Are they taking strong narcotics up at Cambridge?
Also available, MP at $120 and Jane Austen in Context, a bargain at a mere $90.
Good thing we are perfectly happy to have the Oxford editions in the library at AustenBlog World Headquarters. Henry Tilney is an Oxford man, after all.
(Via the Janeites e-mail list.)
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:21 am
I was thinking about buying one of those editions after reading the article about it. Now, I’m thinking I’ll pass.
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:35 am
Moi aussi. I will probably still get them from the library so I can read the essays and things, but no keeper copy unless I win the lottery. My Oxford editions will still be my workhorses.
I hope that the Oxford editions remain the edition of choice for JASNA, etc. It would suck if we had to use these very expensive editions as source material to write for publication.
August 2nd, 2005 at 12:43 pm
Me three, and overhere I do not even have the Library option open. Those at Cambridge have gone out of their mind!!! After all we also have the Norton editions at a more than moderate price if we need autoritative texts and essays.
August 2nd, 2005 at 1:21 pm
Wow. Seriously, wow. I guess I’m also sticking to my beloved Norton critical edition, of which P&P even has a Colin Firth interview in it.
They look beautiful, though. I’ll try and get them on the purchase demand list of my university library, anyway.
August 2nd, 2005 at 3:25 pm
I picked up some lovely copies from Barnes and noble. they are nice little cloth bound editions of JA works and for about $6-8 a book it is a great bargin. In fact i believe right now they are on Sale over at BarnesandNoble.com.
~R
August 3rd, 2005 at 10:04 am
Most self-respecting college and university libraries will get the new Cambridge edition. In fact, that’s why it is priced so unreasonably; the publisher reckons they’ll make more money selling a couple of thousand sets to libraries and very few to individuals, rather than selling far more copies at a cheaper price; the academic libraries would buy it anyway. I know it sucks, but that’s business. Also, if the dollar wasn’t so low, the books wouldn’t be quite so expensive.
I like the Oxford Ed. too, but they are seriously degraded at this point in their history. I bought a set about a year ago. They were printed in 1988, I think. When I compared them to those in my library printed in the 1950s, I noticed the plates on the newer ones are really poor (very gray and less sharp) and the text in many places badly needs re-composing. I suppose Oxford can sell them for so little because they haven’t spent much money on them for several decades.
August 3rd, 2005 at 10:32 am
I think it’s a shame that the rank-and-file Janeite won’t have the opportunity to add these to their collection; though it occurred to me this morning that perhaps they will release more reasonably priced paperback editions later on. They’d have to be really reasonable, though, people won’t pay $50 for paperbacks.
I bought my Oxford editions solely so I would have a nice matching hardback set when I began to be a serious Jane fan; I didn’t even know they were the accepted scholarly source versions.
August 7th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
I have the Oxford edition — OUP had them on sale for around $40 about 5 years ago, so I leaped (leapt?) at the chance to own them. Of course, I own at least 3 or 4 copies of each book…
August 19th, 2005 at 9:43 am
I’m late to this, but I share your dismay and horror at the price of these editions. But I worked as a research assistant on the MP edition, and I can assure you that the price actually does realistically reflect what it costs to do a proper variorum edition from the ground up, as this one has been done.
I also think that once these texts are available it will become clear that the Oxford editions are quite archaic in comparison. So hopefully the paperback eds will appear quickly and be reasonably priced.
August 19th, 2005 at 9:47 am
Hi Laura! I love your blog.
Do you know if there definitely will be paperback editions? The new editions sound great and I would love to be able to buy them.
I do love my Oxford editions, though…