> > Now I'll move on to something that *really* bugged me: the "forward" or introduction to the
> > novel. In the particular edition that I read, it was written by E.M. Forster. He pretty much
> > *ruined* the book for me.

> It only seems to happen in classic books. They generally have a scholarly introduction which
> assumes you *must* already know the entire plot of this book, because it's a classic, right?
> You're obviously only re-reading it for a literature class.

You took the words right out of my mouth.


Another, complementary, downside to classic editions -- while the foreword tells you too much about the book, the jacket blurb tells you nothing.

"There's no point wasting time helping the punter decide whether he wants to read the book," the publisher seems to be thinking, "because nobody's going to consider reading it unless they have to anyway. Let's use all the blurb space telling him why he should read *our* edition instead of somebody else's."


Paul