Cheap is the new superior

WORDSWORTH--the publishers, not the poet-- have raised the status of the cheap edition to superior. No longer can you look down on such a paperback. They even have introductions, the absence of which in a cheap edition used to be a sign of  cost-cutting.

Wordsworth paperbacks appear on  our library shelves in the endearing clear-plastic protective covers, filling gaps that other, older volumes have left by their absence or  banishment to reserve stock.

When I wanted Sherlock Holmes stories, collections now  not always deserving of a place on the shelves, there was a worthy Wordsworth edition of his Adventures and Memoirs,   shining with

Not even his adventures and memoirs, but  here the complete Sherlock Holmes

the admirably gaudy  cover of the great man in red smoking jacket and puffing his pipe. Inside, of course, an introduction and notes. The stories about a man who tries to stay young by foul means not fair, and the original  dog in the night-time, and others,  inhabit the pages.

No price, as a matter of interest, is printed anywhere, but  probably so the seller can charge less, not more, if we’re talking bargain books and not library. In the 1990s, when they started, Wordsworth sold each book for £1.