About Editions
Editions is a reader's guide to the editions of classic books. Each guide sets out the copies worth buying, explains how they differ, and gives a plain verdict.
Last updated
Why it exists
Search for a classic and you will find dozens of versions: different translators, different publishers, and a flood of cheap reprints that look the same in a thumbnail. Retailers rarely tell you which is which. This site does, one book at a time.
Who writes it
[To fill in: who you are, in a sentence or two, and why you are qualified to judge editions]
How each guide is put together is set out in How we compare.
How the site is paid for
Links to buy are ordinary links for now. Once we join affiliate programmes they will earn us a small commission, which will not change what we recommend.
At the moment the links to buy books are ordinary links, and we earn nothing from them. We have applied to affiliate programmes, starting with Bookshop.org, which shares its profits with independent bookshops. When an application is accepted, this page will name the programme, and those links will start to earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. There are no ads and no sponsored content.
Commissions never decide a pick. We choose editions first, using the method on How we compare, and add buy links afterwards. Where a book can be bought from several retailers, Bookshop.org comes first, then Amazon, then the publisher.
Privacy
This site sets no cookies and has no accounts, comments or sign-up forms. We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which does not use cookies or track you across other sites. When you follow a link to a retailer, that retailer's own privacy policy applies, and it may set cookies to record the referral.
Book covers are loaded from Open Library, a project of the Internet Archive, which receives your browser's request for each image.
Contact and corrections
If you spot a mistake, know an edition we should cover, or work for a publisher and can grant permission to quote a translation, please get in touch: [To fill in: contact email address]