Thursday 21 July 2011

Half-a-million Book

We just sent to the printers the longest book we have ever published under the Oneworld Classics imprint, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. At over 500,000 words, it dwarfs Anna Karenina (merely 320,000 or thereabouts) and Don Quixote (around 350,000 I think). Our editor cried this morning when I pressed the Send button.

But it's not the longest book I've published. William T. Vollmann's Imperial, published by Alma last year, clocks up around 750,000 words, spread out – or rather crammed into – over 1,400 pages.

Other books that went to press today are Antonia Pozzi's Poems, in Peter Robinson's wonderful new translation (with dual text), and two lesser-known gems by Raymond Queneau – We Always Treat Women Too Well and The Sunday of Life.

Me, I've spent the last couple of days wallowing in the many pleasures offered by Anthony Mortimer's new translation of Dante's Vita Nuova (again with dual text), to be published next month by Oneworld Classics.

In other news, Hodder has signed a title by Pippa Middleton's pilates coach Margot Campbell.

AG

2 comments:

  1. 'In other news...!' Brilliant! Absolutely bloody brilliant!

    LC

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love the punchline to this post - made me laugh out loud.

    ReplyDelete

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