Book reviews from SimonTremarco

Le Morte Darthur (Norton Critical Editions)

by Malory

The Norton Critical Edition edition by Stephen Shepherd makes for an ideal presentation of Malory, one that strongly evokes the experience of reading the original Winchester manuscript, but at the same time gives plenty of help for the modern reader. Introduction, explanatory notes and glossary are finely judged. Note that this edition is in original spelling and is unabridged: a lower degree of difficulty can be found in Helen Cooper's abridged, modern-spelling edition (Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript (Oxford World's Classics)). The editor expresses some hesitation (p. xii) over the decision to break the text up into modern paragraphs, and not simply to reproduce the manuscript's placement of paragraph symbols in unbroken text. It's not a big issue, but I for one would have found this method attractive, the bold paragraph symbols (as I imagine) breaking up the text adequately and giving an even more distinctive, manuscript-like feel to it. The only thing that slightly detracts from the book for me is the typesetting of the verso pages (the left-hand pages of each opening), which goes against traditional practice. Since the text is prose, set justified left and right, the marginal annotations of the left-hand pages could easily have been placed in the outer margin, in a mirror image of the right-hand pages. As it is there is a stark, mostly empty space along the inner edge of the left page, while the text comes to within a few millimetres of the outer edge, disturbing to the eye and leaving no thumb-room. Poetry has to be set this way, of course, with its ragged right edge - and in any case the narrower columns of text are easier to keep clear of the page's edge. But if this is Norton house style for prose, I can't see why it's necessary.

Everyman's Book Of British Ballads

by Ed Roy Palmer

I would only recommend this book to someone who accepts wholeheartedly the new academic attitudes towards folklore. It was the latest in a line of modern ballad books which increasingly eschewed any romantic ideas of ballads as poetry. Percy in the eighteenth century, Walter Scott and then Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of Ballads, the ballads were seen as part of a great common stock of folk poetry, testifying to folk belief and folk life, but also forming a reinvigorating source for new English poetry. The problem is that ballads exist in many versions. The form is only really alive in the act of performance; and each performance is a unique recreation of the original story, subject to so many unique influences. Academic integrity then requires that this be preserved, and academic enquiry can be made into all the sociological factors which produced the performance. From this point of view it is of just as much interest to study the text of a ballad incompetently performed by someone who misunderstood the traditional story, or even deliberately twisted it for crude comic purposes.The old ballad editors were just that - they actively edited the many versions available to them, and did not resist combining the best of several versions to produce a version that came closer to what they saw as the poetic core of each ballad. Their judgement was on the whole good, and they produced a body of haunting ballads (like 'The Wife of Usher's Well', 'Sir Patrick Spence', and 'King Estmere'), that entered the common subconscious poetic anthology (and most printed ones) alongside the named poets.The degree of their interference shouldn't be exaggerated, though. Walter Scott was aware of the danger of meddling too much. Their classic ballad texts rely more on the exemplary and skilled performances which they had access to, and their editing often amounts to importing an improved line or two from another source.A far greater level of textual meddling was undertaken, for example, by Elias Lonnrot in producing the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. If a university scholar today meddled as much as he did with traditional material, they would be hauled before an ethics committee! Whole foundational Finnish myths and legends owe their shape to him as he transformed many short poems into a coherent (but diverse) saga-poem. Nowadays scholars seem more interested in the massive archives of folk poetry, which expand even on the material collected by Lonnrot and others in the nineteenth century. This material is deeply interesting in itself, and testifies to a once living and vigorous tradition, of which the Kalevala is in one way only a memorial. But the Kalevala is of the stature of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and bears a poetic power that is quite distinct from the traditional poetry that it was made from.The best compromise specialist ballad collection is 'The New Oxford Book of Ballads' by James Kinsey. He is of the new school: he only ever mentions the word poetry in inverted commas, and recoils from the title of editor. He tries to keep to a single version for each ballad, but usually draws these from the best sources (often straight from Scott or Percy). Only occasionally are you brought up with a shock when a key line or verse is missing from a favourite ballad. He also includes annotation for the music that went with each ballad (as well as can be determined), emphasising that ballads were traditionally songs, not recited 'poems'.Palmer takes his versions from late performances (often even modern pub songs), and interestingly also from some Appalachian collections. He also draws on some early printed texts - mostly the fairly corrupt pamphlets that were pilloried by Shakespeare. Nevertheless, his collection shows better than others ballad singing as a living tradition, and the circumstances which produced each one. But the famous titles in his collection (e.g. 'the Wife of Usher's Well') show up sadly corrupted here.With this book, you would definitely also need to have access to the traditional great ballad texts - as is usual in the big anthologies of English poetry.

The Golden Age Of Watercolours

by Eric Shanes

Do not confuse this book (as I did!) with 'The Great Age of British watercolours:1750 - 1880', by Andrew Wilton (PRESTEL, 1993). This one accompanied an exhibition of the Hickman Bacon collection, and although it is said to be 'the largest holding of important British watercolours still in private hands', you will not find here many of the most renowned paintings of the era. All the greatest artists are represented, and the commentary is often illuminating, but the PRESTEL book (which also went with an exhibition) gathers together many more of the key paintings, and so makes for a more impressive book, and a better choice if you just want one book on the subject.For a smaller,cheaper alternative to either, or as a companion, consider Michael Clarke's inspiring and beautifully illustrated DORLING KINDERSLEY/EYEWITNESS Guide to Watercolour.