Karin Falcone Krieger tells the story of Dover Books: “This Is a Permanent Book” (Contingent Magazine).
Dover editions are permanent indeed. I just took down a Dover reprint of Richard Réti’s Modern Ideas in Chess, which I bought almost fifty years ago as a young chess fanatic. Signatures tight, pages unyellowed. It is a permanent book.
Another Dover reprint has been sitting out for everyday use, the scores of the Beethoven string quartets. A little beat up (in the manner of a well-used telephone directory), but it too is a permanent book.
Dover Thrift Editions of course are another story: cheap, cheap paper.
Now where is my Dover copy of Flatland?
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Dover Publications (All the books)
Friday, February 28, 2020
Dover Books
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comments: 2
I loved Dover's reprints, and the quality was absurdly good. Those editions will outlast all of us. I just checked their website and some of my favorites are still in print, although others are gone. I wonder if recent printings still have the elaborate fold-out maps that some of them originally came with.
A few weeks ago I came across a set of Arthur Cleveland Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds in Dover editions, which I had never known about. I later bought the two volumes on birds of prey.
And of course my high school years wouldn't have been the same without the Dover Variorum Shakespeares!
I saw some of the chess books I had ages ago still available from their website, with the same covers.
Thanks for reminding me of the Variorum Shakespeare volumes, which I haven’t thought of in many years.
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