Publishers of note

Just as when you delve deeply into music, you find subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) variations between record labels (Blue Note vs. Verve vs. Impulse vs. CTI in the jazz world), there can be fairly significant differences in publishing imprints.

For a lot of classic books in English (out of copyright), the difference between publishers can be fairly minimal and not really worth getting to worked up over the differences in introductions and afterwords and so forth.  I generally try to stick with Penguin and occasionally Signet for these types of books.  When the translation matters, then it is anyone's guess.  I really am not an expert, and the only language I could even limp through in the original would be French.  So I try to balance the competing views on Amazon and Good Reads until I come up with an edition that seems acceptable.  I've pretty much decided that for Russian, Pevear and Volokhonsky are my favourite translators, though Robert Chandler can be very good indeed, particularly with Vasily Grossman.  In general, Oxford seems to be publishing some of the best work in French translations and in Greek translations.  Again, I am hardly an expert, but I did recently bow to the collective wisdom and picked up the Oxford Classics edition of Herodotus' The Histories, along with the Landmark Histories (since it has such an intense scholarly apparatus and hundreds of maps).  This is part of my general push to complete my education and finally read those key texts that I skipped over in college (as per this post).

However, in terms of actually being guided/steered to look at books simply because they came out on a particular imprint, I think there are only two reissue series that grip me to this extent.  The first is Virago Press, which at least until recently, only published (or republished) female authors writing in English (and they also tend to restrict themselves to authors from the U.K. or Ireland).  So many of the Molly Keane and Barbara Comyns books I read were on Virago, as was the box set of Barbara Pym.  It's a fairly narrow niche, but they do it quite well.  If I happen to see a book has been published by Virago, I will give it a second and third look.  Only occasionally have I been really disappointed.

But that is nothing compared to my fascination with the New York Review of Books NYRB Classics imprint.  If I had infinite money and infinite time, I probably would try to get through the entire list.  I know that is not going to happen, and so I try to be reasonable about it.  Lately I have been much better about getting the books from the library only.  Though I already mentioned how odd it is that Toronto frequently will only have a single reference copy of a lot of these books, which kind of defeats the purpose of a library, at least in my mind.  I'll have to see if you can still request a book through ILL if a reference copy exists.  And fairly soon I will pony up the $70 for a UT alumni library card as they have many of the NYRB Classic titles in stock, and they circulate at UT.  For those not familiar with this press, there is a complete list of NYRB books as of Aug. 2014 (Almost all the work of compiling this was done by Trevor of Good Reads.)

I am not going to list every book here, but I think I will put together a list of the books I have read in this imprint (even including a handful that were read by a different publisher, assuming that either they were written in English or the translation was identical), then list the books that I have picked up on this imprint but not (yet) read, and finally list the other ones that are calling to me (a group that does grow periodically...).  Some books from the second and third groups have already made their way onto my official TBR pile.  These do make up quite a few books, but getting through them wouldn't be a completely overwhelming task, while reading through the entire imprint would be!

NYBR Classics I have read:
Amsterdam Stories by Nescio
Berlin Stories by Robert Walser
A Schoolboy's Diary by Robert Walser
Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser
Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories by Robert Walser
Herself Surprised/To Be a Pilgrim by Joyce Cary
Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery
The Jokers by Albert Cossery
English, August: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee
My Friends by Emmanuel Bove
Henri Duchemin and His Shadows by Emmanuel Bove
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
After Claude by Iris Owens
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Alteration by Kingsley Amis
Girl, 20 by Kingsley Amis
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig
Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
Shakespeare’s Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays
The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye (very Kafkaesque)
Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
Notes of a Crocodile by Miaojin Qiu (disappointing!)
Morte D'Urban by J.F. Powers
Speedboat by Renata Adler
Mr. Fortune by Sylvia Townsend Warner
That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda
The Unpossessed: A Novel of the Thirties by Tess Slesinger
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of Justified Sinner by James Hogg
Samskara by U.R. Ananthamurthy
The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns
Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns
Basic Black with Pearls by Helen Weinzweig
A Month in the Country J.L. Carr 
In the Cafe of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban 
Bright Magic: Stories by Alfred Doblin (Materialism quite good, otherwise disappointing)
The Word of the Speechless by Julio Ramón Ribeyro (short stories)
In Parenthesis by David Jones (basically Eliot's Waste Land set in WWI trenches) 
Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
Talk Linda Rosenkrantz 
Irretrievable by Fontane*
The Captain's Daughter by Alexander Pushkin
Soul by Andrey Platonov
Happy Moscow by Andrey Platonov
The Fierce and Beautiful World by Andrey Platonov
The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
Stoner by John Williams 
A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov
Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhinovsky
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
The Return of Munchausen by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
White Walls: Collected Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya
An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori
Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories by Gregor von Rezzori
Abel and Cain by Gregor von Rezzori (but still need to read Cain section)
Machines in the Head by Anna Kavan
The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia
Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia
To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia
A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
Ride a Cockhorse by Raymond Kennedy
Envy by Yuri Olesha
Troubles by J.G. Farrell
The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell
The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt
The Open Road by Jean Giono
Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati (strange graphic novel on the Orpheus myth)
The Stronghold by Dino Buzzati (will likely read this new translation of The Tartar Steppe)
Soft City by Hariton Pushwagner (graphic novel about corporate culture)
Gébé Letter to Survivors (graphic novel about post-nuclear survival)
MacDoodle St by Mark Alan Stamaty (NYR Comics)
The Labyrinth by Steinberg (NYR Comics) (almost entirely wordless sketches)
The Man Without Talent by Yoshiharu Tsuge (NYR Comics)
Cat Town by Sakutaro Hagiwara (NYRB Poets)
The If Borderlands by Elise Partridge (NYRB poetry)
Friend of My Youth by Amit Chaudhuri
All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani (fairly disappointing after the big build-up by others)
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (The NYRB intro has far too many spoilers, so read it as an afterward.  In general, I am baffled why this is considered such a classic of Arabic literature, as it feels like a minor reworking of Othello) 
Leopoldo Alas His Only Son/Doña Berta (Did not like His Only Son and skimmed/skipped most of it, though Doña Berta is a solid novella.)

NYBR Classics I own (but haven't read):
The Snows of Yester-year: Portraits for an Autobiography by Gregor von Rezzori
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis (read 4 of 7 parts)
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim 
The Furies by Janet Hobhouse (I believe I still have this)
The Human Comedy: Selected Stories by Honoré de Balzac
The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac
Hav by Jan Morris (includes Last Letters from Hav and a sequel)
Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Telluria by Vladimir Sorokin
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov
A Fairly Good Time by Mavis Gallant
Green Water, Green Sky by Mavis Gallant
Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
The Moon and the Bonfires by Cesare Pavese
The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese
Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant
The Hive by Camilo Cela (in new "uncensored" translation)
Caught by Henry Green (first uncensored version)
Loving by Henry Green
Back by Henry Green
Blindness by Henry Green
Living by Henry Green
Party Going by Henry Green
Doting by Henry Green
Nothing by Henry Green
Surviving by Henry Green (short stories and a play)
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
Ending Up by Kingsley Amis
Dear Illusions (Collected Stories) by Kingsley Amis
The Stories of J.F. Powers
Wheat That Springeth Green by J.F. Powers
Kilometer 101 by Maxim Osipov
Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson 
The Door by Magda Szabó
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling
Michael Heller Telescope: Selected Poems (NYRB Poets)

NYBR Classics I would really like to read (& don't own):
Conquered City by Victor Serge
Midnight in the Century by Victor Serge
Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge
The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
Last Times by Victor Serge
Unwitting Street by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Basti by Intizar Husain
People of the City by Cyprian Ekwensi
The Tiger in the House: A Cultural History of the Cat by Carl Van Vechten
On Cats: An Anthology
The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla
The Ivory Tower by Henry James
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
The Late Mattia Pascal by Pirandello
The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
Witch Grass by Raymond Queneau
The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Katalin Street by Magda Szabó
Young Once by Patrick Modiano
The Singularity by Dino Buzzati 
Rock, Paper, Scissors by Maxim Osipov
The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei
Dissipatio H.G. (The Vanishing) by Guido Morselli
Little Snow Landscape by Robert Walser
Melville by Jean Giono
Motley Stones by Adalbert Stifter
Sand by Wolfgang Herrndorf
Zama by Antonio di Benedetto
The Silentiary by Antonio di Benedetto
A Very Old Man by Italo Svevo
The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant
Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin
Ariane, A Russian Girl by Claude Anet
Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick

(Frankly, not quite as sure about these):

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass
A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien
The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott
Naked Earth by Eileen Chang (prob. not as I didn't rate Love in a Fallen City highly)
Little Reunions by Eileen Chang
The Tunnel by Eileen Chang 
Written on Water by Eileen Chang 
Max Havelaar by Multatuli
The Outcry by Henry James
The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya
Tristana by Benito Pérez Galdós
Totempole by Sanford Friedman
Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante
Katalin Street by Magda Szabó
Houses by Borislav Pekić
Transit by Anna Seghers
Temptation by János Székely
The Child by Jules Vallès
Lament for Julia by Susan Taubes
Late Fame by Arthur Schnitzler
Other Men’s Daughters by Richard Stern
Motley Stones by Adalbert Stifter
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington
The Thief by Georges Darien
Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz
Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant 
A House and Its Head by Ivy Compton-Burnett 
Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Havoc by Tom Kristensen
Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov (sounds a bit too much like Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago)
A whole bunch of Simenon as well, but not really sure where to start with those.  Definitely not an author I will tackle in the near future.

* This is a particularly rare case where the Penguin edition (under the title No Way Back) is a newer translation than the NYRB edition, though to my taste NYRB still is the better translation, so that's the one I will read.  The Penguin definitely has better notes, however.