Routledge classics edtions, M-P rant

[tryptych]

A few years ago Routledge started publishing new "Classic" editions of books, you'll recognise the design style, here's Russell:

and here's M-P, the offending volume in question:

For some stupid reason, in this new edition of "Phenomenology of Perception" Routledge decided to re-paginate the whole thing, and in a distinctly non-trivial fashion. Which leads to all sorts of problems with references, and was a right hassle in our reading group, as some people had new editions, some old.. we had to resort to descriptive positions in the text rather than page numbers to refer to what we were talking about. Why on earth they'd do that is beyond me, and to top it off, there were rather a lot of typos that got introduced into the new edition - wtf is that about in a text over 50 years old from such a big publisher? I was pretty pissed of, I can tell you...


Some bright spark has even created a little applet which converts page refs for you! The Ponty Project.

Since then I have been very wary of the whole series - does anyone know if there were similar changes made to other volumes (this is a pretty geeky request, I realise) ? I do quite dig some of their jacket designs...

 

[labrat]

Derrida's Writing and Difference is different too....
agree about the covers.

 

[&catherine]

Many of the Routledge Classics paperbacks are full of typos. Given the attention paid to the covers, it really is rather irritating that such a basic and essential thing as proofreading was so shoddily done. Particularly when the covers are so pretty.

Their copy of Lacan's Ecrits retains the old pagination. And from memory, the pagination in Being and Nothingness is different to that in the old Routledge edition. Furthermore, the ink has a strange fishy smell. Or perhaps it's the binding. In any case - not so pleasant.

 

[sherief]

I have the version of Weber's Protestant Ethic, which I think might actually be one of the first done in this series of reprints...I love the re-introduction of design into the covers, but I am, upset that people have found typos. However, how does this compare with the violent urge towards self-destruction that Verso's paperbacks seem to have?