Barnes & Noble to Publish Literary Classics

Posted on April 18, 2003

Barnes & Noble, Inc. has announced plans to publish a line of literary classics called Barnes & Noble Classics. Each book will contain authoritative texts and original scholarship, including newly commissioned introductions by leading experts and study materials for a new generation of readers. The books will be published in all forms -- hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market paperback, and as ebooks. Prices will range from $3.95 to $9.95. The books will be made available to all bookstores.

Barnes & Noble has been promising to expand its publishing division. This new line of books could compete with classic book programs from other publishers, such as Penguins Classics. Barnes & Noble has not stated how it will position the Barnes & Noble Classics line in its own retail outlets and online store.

"We hope this new series will be the gold standard for classic editions for years to come," said Alan Kahn, president of Barnes & Noble Publishing. "Barnes & Noble Classics reflects our commitment to excellence in every detail - every page, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of each book, including layout and design, paper and binding. We have committed the resources needed to achieve new levels of excellence, identified the leading authorities on classic authors, and produced affordable books in a variety of formats for students, educators and general readers."

In addition to commentary, each book in the series will feature footnotes and endnotes, discussion questions and an index, glossary, and illustrations when appropriate. For example, the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Vanity Fair will include more than 100 illustrations by William Thackeray himself. The books will also feature biographical and historical notes, a timeline of cultural and historical events to put the author's work into context, and a section called "Inspired By," which lists notable sequels, poems, plays, films and paintings inspired by the work.

The first 15 titles will be in bookstores and on Barnes & Noble.com this May. They are:

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
George Elliot's Middlemarch
Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
Jack London's The Call of the Wild and White Fang
Homer's The Odyssey
Bram Stroker's Dracula
Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk

The next 50 titles will roll out over the following eight months, at the rate of about six per month, with 100 titles available by une 2004. As an ongoing series of books, new titles will continue to be published in the years ahead.

George Stade, the Consulting Editorial Director of the series, chose the authors of the introductions to these classics. Mr. Stade is a distinguished Columbia University Professor Emeritus and a former Chair of Columbia College's English Department. He has written more than 100 articles and reviews for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and other scholarly and literary journals. Professor Stade handpicked each scholar based upon his or her study and professional knowledge of a particular classic.

Among the experts are acclaimed novelist Mary Gordon, a professor of English at Barnard College, who wrote the introduction to Howards End. Joseph Frank, professor emeritus at both Princeton and Stanford, and the world's leading authority on Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote the introduction to The Idiot. Peter Bondanella, a distinguished professor of comparative literature and Italian at Indiana University and former president of the American Association for Italian Studies, wrote the introduction for The Inferno.