The Bloomsbury editions once again

Remember those infamous covers and 'extras' for the new, 'cool' Bloomsbury editions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights?

Well, Emma Matthewson, deputy editorial director at Bloomsbury, has spoken about them:

Emma Matthewson, deputy editorial director at Bloomsbury, also hopes that using specially-commissioned introductions will help to attract teenage readers. In August Bloomsbury will be launching a batch of classic titles - Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, David Copperfield and, yes, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice - in editions aimed at 14- to 16-year-olds. “When you had to read a classic for school, often the only available edition had a smudgy painting on the cover. It got me thinking that it would be so fantastic to have a version of a classic that looked amazing and pickupable and had lots of extras in it. Our new classics have introductions by authors that teenagers will be familiar with - it’s almost like having an author you really respect, whether it’s Philip Reeve or Meg Cabot, picking up the phone and saying: ‘Hey, you’ve got to read this book!’” The books will have gossipy, newspaper-like end sections to provide further information and historical context.

We feel so like crying after that. The 'cool', modern bit about it all is so lost on us! Seriously, the so-called 'smudgy painting on the cover' has worked for us all (and in our case it was a Richmond's painting of Charlotte anyway). And we still find the thing about the 'extras' really creepy.

“Covers, introductions and notes can make a big difference, especially if they’re a little less dry,” says Rupert Shortt, who teaches A-level English at City and Islington College in London. “As long as the text is unabridged, and the end matter is relevant, interesting and well set out, I would definitely be interested in using these new editions with our students.”

Less dry, yes. Blinding and wannabe cool, no.

Literary critic John Carey, author of What Good Are the Arts?, welcomes any means by which the so-called canon is made more approachable. “I’m very much in favour of widening the readership of classic titles in every possible way. They are classics because a lot of people in the past have found them rewarding and important to their lives, and that means there is a high chance a lot of people today would find them rewarding and important too. But a whole lot of cultural factors get in the way of access - people feel that old books are out-of-date or highbrow or in other respects not for them, and reading anything, let alone classics, seems unattractive when the competition of other media is so fierce. So I’m wholly behind such efforts.” Change is good - necessary, in fact, if timeless books are to speak to new generations of readers.

So are we in favour, but we don't see how such covers and such coold stuff will work that way. For ages, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have been loved by teenagers - if properly introduced to them (no need of flashy colours and wordings) and if in the right mood or the right character for them - so we don't see how this is going to change things. We'll see in August, I guess.

(Oh, and in the same article, don't miss the numbers on Jane Austen - they are totally stunning! Talk about a best-seller! And still they think they have to do this to get people to read her novels!)

Categories: In_the_News, Books, Jane_Eyre, Wuthering_Heights