Thomas Hardy's latest book
Jul. 17th, 2006 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI have blogged before - I think - about my small but immaculate collection of books with misprints on their covers. Mostly, it's a case of letters gone astray - "The Sweeny", or Ford Maddox Ford, like that. It really has to be in the title, though, or on the spine; I'm not that excited by simple literals in the back-cover copy, eg.
So why have I just paid good money, full price yet, for a book whose back cover asserts that Stoker's The Jewel of the Seven Stars is "generallty regarded" as his best work after Dracula? Because that's just the smear on the icing on the cake, is why. I bought it for the spine.
Return from the Dead, it says. By Thomas Hardy.
Um, you say. Wait a minute, you say; Thomas Hardy never wrote a book called Return from the Dead, you say. And what's all this about Stoker...?
What it is, it's a book of mummy stories, edited by my good friend David Stuart Davies and published by Wordsworth Editions. Featuring Stoker, Doyle, Poe, Webb. Doyle again. No Thomas Hardy at all, revenant or otherwise.
It's just the spine that makes this unaccountable, alternate-universe assertion.
How could I not buy it?
So why have I just paid good money, full price yet, for a book whose back cover asserts that Stoker's The Jewel of the Seven Stars is "generallty regarded" as his best work after Dracula? Because that's just the smear on the icing on the cake, is why. I bought it for the spine.
Return from the Dead, it says. By Thomas Hardy.
Um, you say. Wait a minute, you say; Thomas Hardy never wrote a book called Return from the Dead, you say. And what's all this about Stoker...?
What it is, it's a book of mummy stories, edited by my good friend David Stuart Davies and published by Wordsworth Editions. Featuring Stoker, Doyle, Poe, Webb. Doyle again. No Thomas Hardy at all, revenant or otherwise.
It's just the spine that makes this unaccountable, alternate-universe assertion.
How could I not buy it?