Customer Reviews

The Vita Merlini

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This has to be the most annoying translation of the Vita Merlini available.

The translated text is organized as free-running prose, sprinkled with footnote numbers. Each footnote begins with the number of the corresponding line of the Latin text. The problem? The Latin text in this edition *HAS NO LINE NUMBERS*. Given that this is not a side-by-side translation, there is essentially no link between the translated text and the corresponding location in the Latin version. Perhaps the translator expected his readers to count carefully for each footnote.

In addition, one of the footnotes directs the reader to the book's introduction for further explanations about a particular point. Sadly, the volume doesn't have any introduction.

The translation from the Latin is so-so; there are better available.

As a book seller I am giving you the inside scoop here. Be very careful. The market is being flooded with cheap knock off reprints of books in the public domain. While this in itself is often very useful there are many of them now who have no respect for the book, the author, or you. They leave out the notes, as here, they leave out the introduction, as here, and more often then not they do not bother to even tell you it is a reprint. Not only are all the important academic tools left off to save money they are printed on computers and are an insult to the art of the book. Again reprints are great and a fine tool, I have reprinted one myself in facsimile exactly as it appeared with full disclosure, so that is not the problem, it is the quick buck explotation books that make this scholar and book shop owner sick. Beware and ask the bookseller Amazon allows you to do this.