H.G. Wells Classic Collection I
Hardcover
Illustrations by Les Edwards
Publisher: Gollancz/Orion
Release date: March 2011

While you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, there’s no doubt that most people are drawn to a book’s attractive packaging (just look at the Collector’s Edition of J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard). And with the rise in popularity of ebooks, thanks to their convenience and low prices, that means that if print books are to continue to sell, publishers need to give consumers incentive to choose print over electronic versions, like supplemental material, illustrations, or collectible packaging. This is what Gollancz, an imprint of Orion, has done with the H.G. Wells Classic Collection I, a 678-page leather-bound hardcover with illustrations by Les Edwards.

This collection contains five of Wells’ most popular science fiction stories: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, and The Invisible Man. Each chapter begins with a sketch, which alternates throughout the chapters of each book, like goggles and footprints in The Invisible Man and a creature from The Island of Doctor Moreau; there’s also full-page illustrations through the entire collection.

Next month will see the release of NewSouth Books’ Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The Texts of His Companion Boy Books, which collects the two 19th century classics and revises them to remove an offensive word that, for years now, has been the cause of protests against teaching the books in schools.

The word?: ‘nigger.*’

In NewSouth’s edition, which was revised by Mark Twain scholar Dr. Alan Gribben, all instances of the word ‘nigger’ have been replaced by the word ‘slave’, as has the word ‘injun’, a derogatory term for Native Americans.

Gribben, who is passionate about Twain’s works, told Publishers Weekly he’s not trying to render these works “colorblind,” but that “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”