Why read with notes
The classics weren't written for you. That's the problem.
They were written for readers who knew what an income meant, which words had changed, and which poem everyone quoted. A plain copy leaves you to work all that out alone. Ours tells you, a minute before you need it.
What a plain copy leaves out
The money
Mr. Bennet has two thousand a year; Mr. Darcy has ten. In 1813 everyone in the room knew what that meant, and that's half the comedy. In Jekyll and Hyde, "a hundred pounds" sounds like pocket money; in the 1880s it was more than many working families earned in a year. At the Paris Opera, is twenty thousand francs a month a lot? (Two hundred and forty thousand a year: a very large sum.) Our introductions and glossaries do the arithmetic.
Words that changed meaning
In Pride and Prejudice, "intelligence" means news, "stupid" means dull and "disgust" is mere dislike. In Dracula, "toilet" means washing and dressing. In Wilde's London a "crush" was a crowded party, not a feeling. Lovecraft's "noisome" has nothing to do with noise. Read those words in today's sense and the sentence quietly changes under you.
Things that have vanished
A "commodious fly" waits for the governess in The Turn of the Screw: a light one-horse carriage, not an insect. A hansom was the quickest cab across Victorian London. And some things were brand new: Dracula's heroes fight with shorthand, typewriters, a Kodak and a diary recorded on wax cylinders. The notes tell you what was ordinary and what was the latest thing.
What the first readers caught
Wilde's first readers knew who Antinous was. Mary Shelley's knew Paradise Lost well enough to hear it when her creature speaks, and the "land of mist and snow" as Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Poe's knew enough Latin to hear the threat in Nemo me impune lacessit. The note before the chapter points it out, so you catch it too.
Dialect and foreign phrases
Mr. Swales in Dracula wants his "belly-timber" (his supper). Lovecraft's hill farmers say "haouse" and "heerd". Thrawn Janet is written in broad Scots, and our glossary has over 170 entries for its Scots alone. Poe's epigraphs are in Latin and French. All translated, all a flip away.
Where you are
Some of the greatest books are told in letters, journals and documents: Dracula, Frankenstein, Dangerous Liaisons. A new voice, a new date, and you're flipping back to work out whose papers you're in. The note before each chapter or letter tells you.
Why not just look it up?
You can. Most of us have tried: phone in one hand, book in the other, a search for one word that turns into twenty minutes and, too often, a result that gives away the ending. The spell breaks and the book goes back on the shelf.
A note before every chapter takes a minute and then gets out of the way. You read the chapter straight through, the way the author meant, already knowing what you need. Nothing to look up, and no later chapter given away.
Why not a study edition?
Many study editions are built for essays and exams, with their notes crowded into the page or collected at the back. Ours is built for reading for pleasure: the text runs clean, and everything you need sits before the chapter, in the who's who or in the glossary.
Start here
Gave up on a classic once? These are in the shop now, each with a free sample on its page, notes included.
- Dangerous Liaisons Read their private mail, with a note before every letter.