A Series Of Rhetorical Questions

Oct 10, 2009 20:39

Having written the bulk of my research essay, I'm wasting time going through and fixing up my citations (in order not to go through and make the structural changes I suspect I have to make to the second half, plus of course the introduction and conclusion.) I usually like writing citations, they're mechanical and sometimes interesting. But children's fiction from 1930 turns out to be a NIGHTMARE to cite. I have 4 editions of Peter Duck on the page, one by Jonathan Cape, one by Puffin, two by Red Fox, plus apparently Red Fox is a Random House imprint (I think?) so that's five different publishers, four editions, and I just can't decide whether to cite it as a republished book or a book with multiple editions. I think republished because I want to include both first pub date and the pub date of this edition, but I'm pretty sure that since this is actually a different edition I should point that out (after all, Hugh Brogan dedicated some probably truly distressing amount of time going through and cataloguing all the differences between the editions, which probably means that that's important... or, you know, he had a lot of time on his hands. I mean, seriously?) SIGH. I guess it'll be Frankencitation.

I shouldn't mock Hugh Brogan really, though, since my copy of Swallows and Amazons claimed that it was first published in 1932 and my copy of Peter Duck reckons it was first published in 1930. So obviously this kind of thing isn't as easy as it looks!
Previous post Next post
Up