Shakespeare

For individual plays, the Arden is very good.

>>8502553
"The Family Shakespeare: in which nothing is added to the original Text: but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a Family"

I really like the old Yale series. The little blue books. You can get them on ebay as a full set quite cheap, I've bought two.

Otherwise I would just get a $5 used copy of Norton's collection of the tragedies. You can truly get them for the cost of shipping if you're comfortable with average condition and not having the newest edition. That's what my students usually get when tasked with reading the plays.

I've read a lot of Arden editions and can vouch for their quality (perhaps rather scholarly for some people), though I've been reading the New Cambridge editions and they are quite good too. I've also heard praise for the Oxford editions, although I have yet to read one; some of them might be more appealing than Arden because they are more recent (that's the case with King Lear, Othello, and Richard II).

>>8502923
I love my Yale copy of The Plague by Camus. It's just so appealing even though it's just a blue heavy duty cover.

I have the Norton edition (both books) of all of Shakespeare's plays and it's really great to just have them all there. If you don't mind the Bible paper.

>>8502941
Seconding the New Cambridge recommendation. Pretty solid editions.