Penguin Classics VS. Oxford World's Classics

>>9294416
Penguin for the spines and larger catalog.
Oxford for the elitism.
Both in a mess for the true patrician

>collecting paperbacks
Why?

>>9294431
Because it gives the impression that you bought them to read them, not to have them as decoration.

>>9294431
I have a lot of books to read and I care about the quality and the a e s t h e t i c
And I prefer paperbacks than PDFs or other stuff.

>>9294416
For durability I prefer the Oxford classics. Penguin's covers are more papery than waxy and get brittle and tear easier. At least that's my experience with them.

Oxford World's Classics are cheaper and better quality

>>9294435
>caring about impressions
You could just stop being a pseud instead.

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>>9294416
Oxford is best.

>>9294426
>Penguin for the spines

I love Penguin Classic paperbacks, they're extremely cheap and I can jut toss them around and treat them like shit because they are so cheap

Do Penguin Classics have annotations and introductions?

Annotations help for much older texts (19th century and before) and I love reading the introductions and extra material after I'm done reading the book.

Oxford are rigid pieces of shit with horrible spines; I hate them with a passion.

>>9294709
Some do, many don't.

>>9294877
That sucks. Any good paperback classics where all of them include those features? I know all of the Barnes and Noble classics have them. Ugly covers usually, but I'm mainly concerned with the text(s).

>>9294690
>not WORDSWORTH

>>9294431
Because I can carry it around and they are often inexpensive. Also, a collection could just mean a large number of similar items.

>>9294416
I usually pick whichever translation provides more "readability" to me, or if it is considered the most accurate.

>>9294877
The Oxford quality in their latest runs is kind of shit right now. I got Faust recently and the covers are slightly askew, as is the text inside. Everything slants low to the right and while it hasn't impacted readability, it's kind of amazing it made it to print with so obvious an error.

>>9294416
oxford has bad spines but really it all depends on the translator, if they both have same content, go with penguin

>>9294709
If you search a particular penguin classic on Amazon and use the "look inside" feature, you can see whether it has an intro and/or notes.

>>9294416

ive read a fair amount of both and say theyre pretty comparable. ive heard norton critical editions are GOAT though.

why limit yourself to just one set of classics? that sounds really unnecessary. there are different translators and scholarly material between the two editions and i think it would be ridiculous to forego a better edition simply because the cover doesnt match all your other ones.

>>9294483

This. What you should care about is the contents of the literature and being frugal in getting it. If you have tons of income to throw around, that's when you care about aesthetics.

For me, the fact I don't go out of my way to buy expensive firsthand editions makes the rare good find that more pleasant. My bests: a gold-leaf hardcover of Sherlock Holmes short stories and a 1987 Harvard Press collector's edition of Emerson essays. Paid $3 a piece at Goodwill.

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>>9294895
I also have a few Collins Classics, although I don't like them that much because often their texts are quite small. I usually just look whichever one is the cheapest.

pic arent mine

>>9294416
If it's a translation then the quality of the translation is most important. I'll usually research this before purchase, going for the happy medium between accuracy and readability if there are lots of options. If there's any doubt, I usually go with Oxford; their translations are always scholarly and will always have contextual notes.

Special shout out for Loeb if you're studying classical languages.

If it's not a translation, then I'll usually go with whatever's cheapest, often Wordsworth, though I can be swayed by cover design.

In terms of paper and printing quality, I find Oxford is superior. I also prefer the majority of their covers.

>>9294709

Nearly all Penguin Classics I've seen have introductions, and they only lack notes if it was written fairly recently.