"Thank you for...the elegant Illustrated Edition of your family primer."
Billy
Collins
Poet Laureate of the United States
Q: Tell me the
difference between the two editions of the Longfellow Poems CD.
A: The Standard Edition gives the
full experience of the poems themselves. The readings and music,
the printed texts of the poems, and Longfellow's biography are
identical to the Illustrated Edition, but in conventional
CD packaging. The graphic design on both editions is by Glenna
Lang; recordings were done by John Etnier of Studio
Dual, and the mixing and mastering by Jonathan Wyner of M-Works.
Q: So why are
there two editions?
A:The Illustrated Edition is a celebration
of the nineteenth-century bookmaker's art. Its visual elegance
reflects the eloquence of the poetry.
The illustrations reproduce steel engravings from my personal
copies of his collected works of 1856 and 1885—the original
texts of the poems are duplicated from the 1885 volume. The covers
reproduce those of Samuel Longfellow's 1886 biography of Henry,
issued in an edition of 300; I have number 94.
The remaining illustrations are portraits from the collection
of the Longfellow
National Historic Site. I think they present the humanness
and the family life of Longfellow directly to the reader's heart.
There are four portraits of Longfellow that mark your progress
through the sections of the book and through his life.
In this edition, I've introduced each poem with a glimpse into
Longfellow's world, through excerpts from his journals and diaries.
His creativity is obvious when you see the experiences and images
and anecdotes from his life that he then transformed into poems,
into verse that lives on nearly two centuries later.
The sources that I used, both historical and contemporary, are
in the bibliography. The book closes with a reproduction of HWL's
signature. I wanted the Illustrated Edition to be as personal
as the adaptations, and to reflect this immortal poet and fine
human being both warmly and respectfully.
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