Finest LEC series?

Haven’t seen a discussion here on this, maybe it’s not a natural way to think about it, but what do you kenners think? Shakespeare-jewel-crown-etc but other than that?

Edit: Series as in, say, 1936-7 series of 12 works rather than multi-volume offering or set (say the Mallory in that series - or the Thousand Nights and a Night a few years prior which I think spanned two months), if that’s at all unclear.

Interesting topic.

Of course the Shakespeare set has pre-eminence for me on many counts, but after that I will have to say my own favorite, though I couldn't make a claim for it as the finest, is lucky 13:

THE OLD WIVES' TALE. (John Austen), THE SCARLET LETTER (Henry Varnum Poor), HUCKLEBERRY FINN (Thomas Hart Benton), THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS (Samuel Chamberlain), SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY (Boardman Robinson), THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS (William Sharp), THE CROCK OF GOLD (Robert Lawson) THE LITERARY WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (John Steuart Curry) ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES (Fritz Kredel), FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (Lynd Ward), THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF MEXICO 1517-1521 (Miguel Covarrubias)

Each work I consider indispensable in my library and in each case I think the artist chosen to illustrate couldn't have been bettered.

>2 Django6924:

Thank you! Quite a range when you look at them all together. I only heard of Spoon River through collecting LECs, but the concept seems excellent.

I’m really not acquainted with enough of the LEC editions to pick a a series as _fine_ books, so I had a swift read through Majure’s list while thinking about each series as literature ”only”. All I managed to conclude was that there’s a lot of books I’d like to read (or re-read) in every single series...

I was considering phrasing the q as ”Which LEC series would you take to a desert island?”, but I suppose the answer may be obviously the first, as it contains Robinson Crusoe!

My two favorites, one from the early Macy era, the other from the early Shiff era:

The 2nd series, 1930-1931:
Notre Dame de Paris
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
The Odyssey
Tartuffe
The Little Flowers of St Francis of Assisi
Saptor Resartus
Aucassin & Nicolete
Grimm's Fairy Tales
An Iceland Fisherman
Vaniy Fair
Marble Faun
The Iliad

The 46th Series, 1982:
Tender is the Night
The Iceman Cometh
The House of the Dead
Fahrenheit 451
The Circus of Dr Lao
The Threepenny Opera
Poems and a Memoir by Seamus Heaney
A Streetcar Named Desire
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Poems of the Caribbean

>6 elladan0891: And I have both series! One complaint, An Iceland Fisherman is the most poorly printed LEC I have ever run across.

I've been pondering this question but I don't actually own a complete series yet to be able to offer a proper answer. I'll have to come back to it when I get a few series in totality in my collection...

>8 WildcatJF: I'm in the same boat, but it didn't stop me from posting :) I have no intentions of acquiring every single LEC anyway for a number of different reasons. For example, I have no interest in The House of the Dead because I don't buy English translations of Russian authors as I can read them in the original.

>7 kdweber: Interesting! I still need to acquire this book, didn't expect it to be poorly printed! And I was actually really interested in reading it. Anyway, I don't think it will change my mind about the series, as it features some of my favorite gems.

The 46th Series is replete with gems! I don't have the Seamus Heaney nor the Threepeny Opera but the others are favorites.

>7 kdweber:
Ken, do you really think The Iceland Fisherman is printed more poorly than Two Medieval Tales? The font in the Stevenson book gives me eyestrain.

>10 Django6924: Regarding the Two Medieval Tales, the choice of font is a design thing, not a printing thing. Haven't seen the book myself, but suspect it to be well-printed, just not designed to your taste. Am I right?

>7 kdweber: Had to look at my copy again since I did not remember it being poorly printed. Still think that this is a bit harsh.

>9 elladan0891: I liked the story. Not as memorable as Anna Karenina but still worth a read.

The 6th Series: 1934-35 is a candidate:
Emerson's Essays
Christmas (A) Carol
Canterbury (The) Tales
Green Mansions
Utopia
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
House (The) of the Seven Gables
Voice (The) of the City and Other Stories
Slovenly Peter
Typee
Life (The) and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Ulysses

My favorite from the Shiff era is Series 54:
Seven Years in Tibet
Wuthering Heights
Le Paysan de Paris

>11 Glacierman:

Well, the letterpress is well done (although those who like a tactile indentation of the type may not like it) and of uniform density throughout, so in that respect it is well printed, but I can't divorce the mechanical application of type on paper completely from the visual impression it makes on the reader, and for this reader I find the page is downright unattractive.

>14 Django6924: Understood. A well printed but poorly designed book is not a pleasure to read and conversely, a well designed but poorly printed one isn't either. One needs both elements to balance and in this case, for you at least, they don't.

I am a big fan of the fourth series which included:

Three Musketeers - Dumas
The Four Gospels
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
The Divine Comedy - Dante
The Tragedy of Hamlet - Shakespeare
Pickwick Club - Dickens
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Aesop's Fables
Don Quixote - Cervantes

What a pleasing variety of opinion.

For a thought experiment I did a quick count and found I had a single book from each of 15 series stretching from 3 to 46, two each from two and four each from another two - 20 and 37. Plus all of the 11th, but that’s Olde Bill again.

I conclude from this that neither the goal of collecting a book from each series (even if limiting this to the GM years) nor that of completing a single series would work well for me (at current wealth...). The former would allow picking a great many lovely cherries, but would mean buying almost 40 books to touch every series and I suppose without checking at least 20 for the GM years/series (which would strain my current shelf capacity and cost a great deal in transatlantic shipping). The latter runs into the problem that I think every series contains one or several books I don’t really want to read or own - particularly, in some cases, considering going prices. (What do book collectors call the psychological flaw of not wanting to own a book one does not want to read? Anyway I’ve got at least four copies of Hamlet, and while I’m likely to read it again I’m not likely to read all of these... so clearly I’m more flexible than I’d like to think.)

Not that I need such a goal for now. I’ll just keep buying LECs I want to read or own for their beauty when they show up at the right price. I’d be interested to know if others are more systematic, though!

(Edited to reduce the risk of sounding dismissive of anyone else’s mode of collecting! And to say I wish my infatuation with the LEC coincided with living in the US...)

>17 GusLogan: I started collecting LECs by accident. Then started collecting random titles that I liked for a bit. Decided to collect at least one book from each series through the 47th later extended to through the 50th. Then I collected the entire series for my birth year and the year I got married. Then I bought a copy of the First 50 Monthly Letters and decided to collect the first fifty titles to go with it (now up to first 56 titles). Next came the complete series of 42 through 48. Now looking for around 20 titles on my wish list and will replace EP copies with the original LEC if I find one in nice condition and well priced.

>18 kdweber:

That’s a wonderful - what to call it? Random walk? Whimsical journey of discovery? Both sound a bit offensive, not my intention! Progressive... refinement... of collecting principles?

(I quite like the idea of reading the first series month by month as a centennial celebration.)

Me? My focus isn't so sharp; I just collect the ones I want to read with a few selected for their typographic excellence.

I revisited this question with a secret scientific method and ended up like Burridan’s ass between the 12th and 20th series, noting nobody above pointed to either of those…

Edit: I retract. Has to be the 4th series. As per >16 jpinomaha: above. Here I stand. But the 46th is amazing. I need both. All of them. Well, most of them.

>16 jpinomaha: I suspect the fourth is the series from which I own the most titles (four: Gospels, Aesop, Dante, and the Don), and all of them are indispensable.

I have heard (including some Macy quotes), that the Anna Karenina is a mess (apparently it was a nightmare working with the Soviets and the resulting quality was subpar), but I haven't actually seen a copy in person.

>22 abysswalker: I absolutely adore my beat-up copy of the two volume 1933 Anna Karenina published by the USSR “State Publishing House for Fiction and Poetry” primarily because of the amazing story related in the ML about how much trouble it was to get it done. Considering it had only been about a decade since the worker’s revolution, the bureaucracy, bribery, and paranoia getting the book, though not on time, printed at all struck me as quite an achievement. As part of George Macy’s vision to have an international classic entirely printed in its country of origin, I couldn’t ask for a better example.

>22 abysswalker:
When Gill’s Hamlet and Huckleberry Finn are left on the table it’s a sign of a strong series! I’ve got the Aesop, the Don Q and the Hamlet and would love the Divine Comedy and Huckleberry Finn but am perfectly happy with the later Anna Karenina…

>23 BionicJim:
Great story, that. I considered starting a thread on Macy’s choices of countries and the politics of that but thought better of it, mostly because I suspect that Anna K and a few others (Kwaidan, Analects, Frithiof’s saga…) are exceptions and that he usually really picked printers first, ie Mardersteig/OB/SV rather than fascist Italy, though he did stay away from Germany and Spain after 1933 (I think).