A friend of mines after this book for Xmas. It seems impossible to get under normal circumstances-amazon only print it to customer order for £30 and half.com can only do me a comic version from the 50s, or else its a ridiculous price.
Anyone know why its only made to order when most of his other books are readily available? I went to one of the major high st retailers and they had it with a ‘CS’ appendix by its name on the database, whereas everything else is ‘IP’ (in print) or ‘OP’ (out of print). the customer service girl didnt know what t meant, and was unable to find out. ??
Not exactly addressing your queries here, but there are a few book outlets that do cheap paperbacks of non-copyrighted texts (dunno about in londonon, but there’s definitely one in the Covered Market “up the pox” [i.e. in Oxford]). If you could find one of these, they’d prolly have the complete works of Victor Hugo in stock.
There’s one listed on Abebooks.com for under 6 quid. The snag is that the shop with it is in the USA - and most of the other copies listed are way more expensive…
That’s wierd Gutenberg doesn’t even have it in their collection except in the original French. My guess is that somebody still owns the rights to the translation. Everything else of his is out there.
A little research reveals that while Victor Hugo’s writings are in the public domain, many of the translations (which are copyrighted to the publishing companies) are not, which is why some of his major works (which were translated long enough ago that they are out of copyright) are available on-line many of his lesser read works are still protected, and MAN WHO LAUGHS is one of them (though L’Homme Qui Rit is available several places on the net).
Half.com (an American site) has the book for $50 (40.56 Euros, £28.50) that would probably be in England in time for Xmas.