Wednesday, 3 May 2017

Editing News

Now that we've sent our edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint to be officially registered, and that our work on editing Oscar Wilde's Salomé (the original French edition, and a new translation in English by yours truly - the introduction is being written by Cousin Editor-in-chief) is nearing completion, we've made a discovery: we love editing the books that we loved reading.

We're still working on our own stories or works, but it's properly exhilarating and possibly addictive to go back to the original texts, edit and dust them off (or even make discoveries), and then share them with you, dear Readers.

The day we had the idea to publish our favourite works, we came up with this list:
William Shakespeare: Sonnets - Much Ado About Nothing
Oscar Wilde: Salomé (we decided to translate it into proper English when we read how it's been treated by Douglas)
Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
Jean Racine: Phèdre
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

We have now added:
The Forme of Cury
Edmond Rostand: Cyrano de Bergerac (a request from my aunt)

Even if it was a lot of work, editing Shakespeare gave us access to fonts that can mimic the ligatures used in the early years of printing.
Last night, in order to do something soothing after dealing with the infuriating banker, we had a look at the first edition of Racine's Phèdre et Hippolyte, and we discovered that he wrote an introduction, and that the text of the royal privilege allowing him to print the play was printed there, as well.
We're not planning to make a facsimile of it, but we started thinking that it'd be different, unusual, original to publish a version of the text as it was first printed. Perhaps it's quite a niche, but we really think it could be a different kind of edition.

De is plotting more short stories (focussing on friendship this time).
Chris is still formatting her PhD.
I've got two Muff&Sherly stories ready to be edited (and the next novel is whispering in my ear). I've been thinking about my Sordid Fairy Tales, and my Victorian spy plot, too.

We're quite busy.
Now, if only we could find a banker with a brain and get this e-bookstore started... 

PS: if there are books that you'd like us to edit, you're more than welcome to make suggestions.

2 comments:

Ruan Peat said...

Oh I love Cyrano De Bergerac! cant wait! I would like to ask for the count of Monte Cristo, there have been various translations and edits! :-) Cant wait for your site to go live!

Lanor said...

Cyrano... just in French, or bilingual?
Monte Cristo. Noted. Not familiar with that one, but we'll see what we can do.

It'll be cool when the site's online, coz it'll mean that we have a bank *and* a Wordpress bank plugin, too!! ô.O