Although my blog content admittedly has been lacking lately, I'm afraid that I'm not doing much better today. I've seen several people doing Booking through Thursday and I haven't done any memes at all so far, so here goes.
Do you have multiple copies of any of your books?
If so, why? Absent-mindedness? You love them that much? First Editions for the shelf, but paperbacks to read?
If not, why not? Not enough space? Not enough money? Too sensible to do something so foolish?
Yes! I do have many duplicates among my books. Most of the duplicates I have because they are books that I study and often use in my research, so having different editions prepared by a variety of scholars is useful because they have different insights in their footnotes and introductions. This is why I have so many copies of Renaissance French books and the Bible (I study early religious reform—before Luther—as expressed in literature of the period). Some of the other French duplicates I have because a professor in graduate school discovered that he had different editions from the ones he had ordered for us in the campus bookstore. So, all of us poor grad students had to scrape our pennies to buy his editions of the texts so that we could all follow along in class. Thus, I have multiple copies of Balzac, Montesquieu, Voltaire…there are even a few more that I don’t mention below.
I’m sure that I have more duplicates than the ones I list. Sadly, the great majority of my books are in storage, so I’m working mainly on memory here. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we will find a new house soon so that all of my books can be restored to their proper place on shelves instead of in boxes!
The Bible: 5 copies (New Jerusalem, New Oxford Annotated, Revised Standard, a French language edition, and a leather-bound one that my granny gave me as a child)
Jeanne Flore, Les Comptes amoureux : 5 copies—this is the book I’m writing my thesis on. So, I have a microfilm copy of both the original and second editions (1540 & 1542), two modern editions and my very own English translation, which I hope to publish next year (again, keeping the fingers crossed!)
Rabelais’s Gargantua: 4 copies
Rabelais’s Pantagruel: 3 copies
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence: 2 copies; one movie tie-in--I hate movie tie-ins, so I had to buy another nice paperback
I love old hardback books, so these two I own in both modern paperbacks and vintage hardcover:
Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga: 2 copies; one cheap paperback and one nice old hardcover from 1928
Marguerite de Navarre, Heptaméron:3 copies (2 French; one old English language hardcover)
Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: one paperback; and one autographed & personalized paperback that I got when I met her at a public lecture a few years ago (she is so nice and thoughtful; I loved her!)
The fault of former grad school prof (2 editions of each):
Balzac, La Fille aux yeux d’or
Montesquieu, Lettres persanes
Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques
Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro
As for these two from childhood, I bought stray trade paperbacks of one book in each series, loved them and then had to buy a complete matching set, resulting in a couple of extras.
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: one stray paperback; one in complete set
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods: ditto
I hope to catch up on reviews this weekend!
