Wednesday 12 August 2015

Crapping Out Classics

A quick round-up of recent developments in the world of hideous public-domain publishing...

Item 1: This splendid edition of the Bible from our old friends at Vexin Classics, which in no way confuses belief systems:



Item 2: Some delightful editions of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the cover designs of which shows all the subtlety and wit we've come to expect from the cheaparse cash-in merchants who populate Amazon's sewage-choked ebook library:




That last version claims to be "illustrated" by Zooey Hawkins. And it is, if by "illustrated" you mean "Photoshop filter run hastily over stolen promotional images from the recent movie adaptation".



Item 3: Further Pride and Prejudice investigations lead us to the nameless outfit responsible for these delights...






If the covers are any guide, the images in these "Color Illustrated" books should be very helpful indeed.

Item 4: The next stage on this short tour of hell is the strange world of Ronn Says, an Indian writer who "writes about various genres, and believes in spreading his experiences through his books. But primarily his genre is full fledged Romantic Novels. He is much acclaimed for his books". And you can see why, when they look like this...



..but he also dabbles in publishing the classics, with stolen movie posters on the covers, with these results...

Jane "Stone Cold" Austin


(One good thing about all this copyright theft from movies is that it adds several more books to the Keira Knightley Library of World Literature.)


..though he sometimes steers away from movies in order to experiment with era-appropriate stock photos...


..which leads us finally to Item 5: Further anachronistic up-fucking of Stephen Crane's US Civil War classic...

"Special" as in "special education class", I assume

Antietam, Vietnam, it's all the fucking same, right?

The War Between the States and the Arctic Centurions

Napoleonic Hussars devastated large swathes of Atlanta 

8 comments:

Emma said...

Excuse me, but my great-great-grandfather was one of the Arctic Centurions that followed Sherman on his march to Atlanta. Like the soldier depicted on the cover of Crane’s novel up there, he was armed with nothing more than an extra-long BBQ fork and a pair of antigravity sandals. The Arctic Centurions suffered some of the most devastating casualty rates in the whole war (obviously attributable to their unfamiliarity with non-tundra landscapes); a little respect would be appropriate.

Still trying to reconcile Frederick Douglass’s career as a lesbian stripper with his work as an abolitionist, though. He was a great man — and I’m told he could do a Russian split like nobody’s business.

These books should not be allowed.
Things are bad when Keira Knightley brings a welcome atmosphere of gravitas to the proceedings :[

Lisa Eckstein said...

These are truly amazing. I laughed audibly at some of your comments. Keep up the strange work!

JRSM said...

Lisa, I thank you. And Emma, I'm sorry for insulting your ancestors. I need to remember that the Arctic Romans were a proud and dangerous people, and a mis-spoken word could lead to an icy kick up the arse.

Jonathan said...

Er..what! These are so bad they're good. I thought you'd made them up but a quick look on Amazon shows they're real...well, in cyberspace anyway. Eek!

Jonathan Walker said...

WTF is happening to the horse and rider in the last picture? They appear to be in a hell dimension of stretching and squashing.

Jonathan Walker said...

Though it turns out that's Gericault's fault, not the 'publisher's'.

Anonymous said...

Can I just say these - in particular the Bible - made me laugh so loud I scared the cat.

Jane Housham said...

Superb, you should get some sort of award for this.