From: "Bradley Omanson" <[log in to unmask]>
>I remember a justifiably indignant article in the NY Times Book Review back
>in the late 70s (I think it was) about the Collected Auden which had just
>come out, and how unconsciounable it was that such a thick tome was held
>together with "miracle" binding -- where nothing is sewn and the pages are
>just whacked off & jammed with glue onto the spine. Libraries around the
>world would purchase this definitive volume for their collections and in
>two or three decades the glue would begin to deteriorate and, if the volume
>had received any readers at all over the years, the pages would begin to
>pop out.
>
There may be a degree of confusion here.
As far as I know, the first printing of the [Faber] Collected Auden was
stitched.
A later reprint (with perhaps five more poems) was perfect-bound.
Neither were god's gift to printing but the paperback version was beyond
disgust.
The only reason to (as I glumly did) buy the paperback version was for the
"extra" poems.
But this entire scenario ties in to the Auden Publication Fiasco, which
seems to me to benefit no one other than Auden's lterary executor Edward
Mendelson.
<sigh>
To cut to the chase, the text to buy is _The English Auden_.
(Leaving aside the physical nature of the text, The [Faber] Collected Auden,
reflecting Auden's wishes, is a "revised" text. Wot, no Sept. 1939?
D'oh!!!]
... or the original Faber _Selected Poems_ (edited by -- who else? --
Mendelson).
Frankly, the textual problems of the Auden canon are beyond belief.
Robin
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