justin66
3 days ago
The last I checked, it was weirdly difficult to buy a copy of Last and First Men and be certain you were getting the complete book as it was intended to be read by the author.
Oddly, this article is "adapted from Matthew De Abaitua’s introduction to Olaf Stapledon’s "Last and First Men," which says "abridged" on the cover. I wonder what that's all about.
contact9879
3 days ago
It’s freely available from Project Gutenberg.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79003
The edition referenced in the article removes the last 4 chapters (13–16)
justin66
3 days ago
The book entered the public domain since I looked into it. Fun!
contact9879
3 days ago
Yep! It became public domain in the United States this year. But it's been public domain in Canada since 2020 (70y after death) and has been available from Canada's Project Gutenberg equivalent: https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200531
anigbrowl
3 days ago
Off topic, but what kind of ego does it take to write an introduction that gets your name on the cover of an abridged edition? Certainly, a writer might conceive of a work as having 10 chapters and being complete, only for a publisher to demand 3 more to satisfy the expectations of the market or some literary superstition. But having been written, the text exists. It seems extremely presumptuous to me for a literary critic to take on the curatorial role and say 'you don't need to read the last quarter of the book, it's boring/repetitive.'
8bitsrule
3 days ago
A book of that stature being published cutailed in any way should be carefully avoided by all readers.
The 'Canadian Gutenburg' PD version [0] mentioned in another comment here contains all 16 chapters. ('Star Maker' is also there, as is 'Last Men in London', 'Odd John', and more.
justin66
3 days ago
This is definitely not the first printed edition to omit those chapters. There’s a story there and I don’t know what it is.