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The only New Year's resolution I made for myself last year was to read more books. I had only read a pathetic few in 2013 so I made sure that as soon as I finished a book in 2014, I grabbed a new one to start. Now that 2014 is wrapping up, I find that I've read about 15 books, which isn't too bad. So I decided to end the year with an old favorite--you can probably guess what it is--which meant I was on the hunt for yet another edition.
That's getting harder and harder of course, but I got lucky during an eBay search and found this British edition published in 2000. Not a bad cover, and the back cover plot description is pretty good. I can't think of a better way to end the year than with Larry Darrell and his search for the Absolute.
This is probably hands down the strangest version of The Razor's Edge in my collection, a version of the book printed in Palestine and entirely in Hebrew!
I found this on eBay for just a few bucks, and I couldn't resist buying it. This was certainly the moment my collecting of this book kicked into another gear, because I wasn't able to read this one--I simply wanted to own it.
Except for the words "Printed in Palestine" on page three, there is no other English in this edition, so I have no idea when it was printed. Considering what a huge hit the book was when it first came out, I'm betting this edition hails from the late 1940s. But of course I can't be sure...
Up until the 2003 edition (part of a whole series of Maugham updates), this 1992 Penguin "Twentieth-Century Classics" edition of The Razor's Edge was probably the most frequently seen version of the book: for many years, it was the only edition that was still in print.
A rarity for The Razor's Edge, this edition features an introduction by Anthony Curtis, which is interesting in its own right (although I can't get on board with his view that the 1946 film adaptation was "pretty much a disaster"). Indeed, since I feel The Razor's Edge only gets more interesting with time, I wish every iteration of the book had an intro such as this; I'd love to read what people thought about the story as the decades passed.
