Posted by Edwin M. Kiser on March 22, 1999 at 21:19:53:
As a loyal fan of Ransome's works since I began reading them back
in the late '30's, I have accumulated several sets of the
dozen volumes of the S&A series.
My recent acquisitions are published by David Godine, in yellow
paperback, the "Swallows and Amazons" being of the eighth
printing, dated 1997, with the type reset in 1958. I also have a
'53 printing of the same book produced by Jonathan Cape
publishers.
In looking thru the Godine recent version, I have come across a
set of errors, mostly in punctuation, comma/period reversed,
missing quotes, but some spellings or the wrong word used.
Now, I understand there is an extreme gap in what we Americans
call "English", as compared to what our friends in the Mother
Country also refer to as "English", and my errors are not
examples of noting such differences.
I have looked up each place where an error is found in the
Godine edition, compared it with the '53 Cape edition, and have
found it right in the Cape edition. Upon contacting an Editor of
the Godine publishers to offer this list of errors, he claimed that
the Godine version was published directly from the MASTERS
produced by Cape (a later version than my '53, so I cannot verify
that.) The only changes made by Godine were on the Title page
for obvious reasons. He said that any errors I found in his
printing must therefore exist in the Cape edition as well.
My conclusion is that if his observation is true, then the Cape
quality had greatly declined, since these errors were not in the
'53 edition, but somehow had crept into a later Cape edition upon
which the Godine publication is based.
I list a few of these errors here, so that perhaps some helpful
soul that has access to a later Cape edition can verify if that
same error exists there or not.
These page references are to the '97 eighth printing by the
Godine version of "Swallows and Amazons":
p170 third para: "The other were flashing..." should be
"The others were flashing..." ("s" missing from "other")
p192 3rd para: "It would never to to get the natives..."
should be "It would never do to get the natives..."
where "to" should be "do".
p228 second line, "woket he sleep..." should be "woke the
sleep..." The space is in the wrong place.
p235 second line, "sort of peole we have..." should be "sort
of people we have..." The word, "people" is missing the
inner "p".
This is only a sample few of the 38 I found in all. My concern
is that Godine does not think it will bother with trying to make
these corrections, and secondly, if their version is a true
representation of what the latest "Cape" edition has, then the
quality of the "Cape" edition sure has gone down since the '53
version from Cape I have, where none of these errors exists.
I do hate so to see any falling off of quality to where it may
detract from the value of these books to our younger generations.
If anyone wishes the complete set of errors, I can send them via
EMAIL; just let me know.
Please forgive me if there are "typo" errors in this note.
Nobody is perfect; I least of all...
Ed Kiser email: Ed_Kiser@prodigy.net