You're quite right about the Penguin, Hannibal.  We're comparing two excellent editions, after all.  The Yale Shorter paperback wasn't well bound, but it was beautifully laid out and very ably edited.  I would give the nod to McCabe for the apparatus simply because he's a significantly better critic than most of the rest of us, but with small type and notes jammed in the back, the edition is more economical than lovely.  It's the one I use, though.

On the other hand no single edition ever fully supersedes the editorial tradition--not even Hamilton's truly monumental FQ does that.  I wouldn't consider my own library complete if it lacked either the Yale or the McCabe.


On Oct 2, 2009, at 5:02 PM, Hannibal Hamlin wrote:

Another factor, often neglected, is the physical layout of the book. The Yale Shorter Poems has a wonderfully generous amount of white space, letting the poetry breath, and the student scribble marginalia. I don't have the Penguin Spenser to hand, but if it's like other Penguins, it is probably more economical in its use of paper, alas.

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 4:57 PM, anne prescott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Poor Peter. He was probably forced to buy all this stuff because people like me made him do so. I just wanted to add that either in Peter's Columbia days or just before he came I was teaching a grad course on Spenser and had an honest-to-God student revolt on my hands when we turned back to the "minor" poems. I was told that now way, no how, under no circumstances absent bayonets or pistols were they going to read any more from the Smith and Selincourt edition. Just as I was wondering what to do, being younger and still remembering 1968 at Columbia, behold! The Yale Shorter poems! The bookstore rushed them to us and all was well. Anne P.

On Oct 2, 2009, at 4:07 PM, Peter Herman wrote:

I could probably get it now, but I bought the Yale FQ when I was but young, callow, and broke graduate student! (which is one reason I keep my “folios” of this edition).

pch


On 10/2/09 1:01 PM, "Hannibal Hamlin" <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]> wrote:
The trick with the Yale FQ is to get the hardcover!


 
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Peter Herman <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]> wrote:
In my experience, the Yale Shorter Poems stayed together. It's the Faerie
Queene that has turned into an unbound manuscript rather than a book.

Peter C. Herman


On 10/2/09 9:46 AM, "Anne Prescott" <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I wish myself that Yale would do a new edition (and, yes, do a better
> job of binding). I find both Yale and McCabe admirable. As for the
> Norton, Hugh and I simply dropped the Fowre Hymnes, rightly or
> wrongly, and of course the matter in the notes had to go too. In the
> much-delayed new Norton Andrew Hadfield and I are adding the Ruines
> of Rome not as supergreat poetry but as feeding a current interest in
> empire etc. Nice and short, too. Suggestions for what needs glossing
> are welcome. Yes, we are now three years late. Stuff happened. Anne.
>
> On Oct 2, 2009, at 12:26 PM, JD Fleming wrote:
>
>> Thanks to all! JD Fleming
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: [log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]
>> To: [log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2009 9:59:31 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada
>> Pacific
>> Subject: Re: McCabe / Oram
>>
>>
>>
>> Carol Kaske gives good reasons for preferring McCabe's Penguin
>> edition.  I haven't used either across the whole extent of the
>> shorter poems, but it's my impression that McCabe's apparatus of
>> introductions and notes is somewhat superior.  Working recently on
>> the Fowre Hymnes , however, and consulting both editions, in the
>> Yale edition I found things of value in Einar Bjorvand's notes that
>> supplemented McCabe's.  (And in Hugh Maclean's original Norton
>> Critical Ed. of 1968, there is matter in the notes that hasn't been
>> retained in either of the later editions.)
>>
>>
>> Cheers, Jon Quitslund
>>
>> -------------- Original message from JD Fleming <[log in to unmask]" target="_blank">[log in to unmask]>:
>> --------------
>>
>> To all those who know: how does the Penguin edition of Spenser's
>> Shorter Poems,
>>> ed. McCabe, compare with the Yale, ed. Oram et al.?
>>>
>>> --
>>> James Dougal Fleming
>>> Associate Professor
>>> Department of English
>>> Simon Fraser University
>>>
>>> "to see what is questionable"
>>
>> --
>> James Dougal Fleming
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of English
>> Simon Fraser University
>>
>> "to see what is questionable"






--
Hannibal Hamlin
Associate Professor of English
The Ohio State University
164 West 17th Ave., 421 Denney Hall
Columbus, OH 43210-1340
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