the Violet Apple.org.uk
Buying

On this page, I've attempted to give what information I can to help you decide which edition of each of Lindsay's titles to go for if you're looking to buy one.

All of the novels David Lindsay published during his lifetime are now in the public domain. Of these, texts for the first two (A Voyage to Arcturus and The Haunted Woman) are available online (at Gutenberg for Arcturus, and Gutenberg Australia for The Haunted Woman). As a result, it's easy to find ebooks and Print-on-Demand versions of these books, though the Gutenberg text of Arcturus is the “modernised” (for a 1960s US audience) text used in the Ballantine paperback from the late 60s. If you want a more authentic version of the text, see the section on Arcturus below.

I have (through my Bookship imprint) published paperback and ebook editions of Sphinx, The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, and Devil's Tor, and a hardback and free ebook of A Voyage to Arcturus, which I've created from the original editions. See the individual book sections below for more details. I have also produced an ebook (available for Kindle only at the moment) collecting A Voyage to Arcturus, The Haunted Woman, Sphinx and Devil's Tor, which can be bought via Amazon.

(If you have any additional information, or corrections, to this page, please contact me.)

First Editions

Collecting first editions of David Lindsay's novels is very expensive, and likely to take some time. Some older reissues, such as the Gollancz hardback reprints of A Voyage to Arcturus from the 1960s, are easy to find, and not very expensive, so are a good alternative if you want a collectible hardback for your collection.

A Voyage to Arcturus

This is the easiest of any of Lindsay's works to obtain in ebook, paperback, or hardback, but some editions suffer from typos. (I assume most ebook and Print-on-Demand editions are put together using the modernised Gutenberg text.) My own edition of A Voyage to Arcturus, available as a free ebook and a print-on-demand hardback, isn't from the Gutenberg version, but does its best to reproduce the original text. You can read about it, download the ebook, and order the hardback, from this page.

Print editions. Gollancz have kept A Voyage to Arcturus in print in the UK since 1946. Their early HBs (still often available at not-unreasonble prices) did have a very few minor errors ("Leehallfae stroked her chin" on p. 176, instead of "...aer chin" or "...ær chin", as more modern editions have it), but these have been corrected at least since the first PB edition from them. The Allison & Busby and Canongate PBs are good, too. (The Citadel Press edition has the her/aer error.)

The earliest PB edition (and for a while the easiest to obtain) was the Ballantine edition (issued by Pan then Sphere in the UK), and this has a few typos of its own, including the occasional missing quote-mark or comma. But the text in this edition was also modernised, with a lot of minor changes from David Lindsay's original text.

The Bison Books edition, on the other hand, is full of bad typos and OCR errors, at least one of which changes the meaning of a sentence (see my review for more detail). It even has a spelling error on the cover. There's no point in buying this edition.

Audio: There are two freely-available audiobooks of A Voyage to Arcturus, one from Librivox, one available at Archive.org. For a full list of available audiobook editions, see the A Voyage to Arcturus audiobooks page.

Ebook: If you're looking for a well-formatted free ebook of A Voyage to Arcturus with a reliable text, we have one here at The Violet Apple. This text can also be bought as a hardback.

The Haunted Woman

Easy enough to find in ebook, paperback or hardback. As far as I know, the text is good in all editions. I have produced an annotated edition, which you can learn more about here.

Audio: There are two freely-available autiobooks of The Haunted Woman. One was first broadcast on the Brighton & Hove Community Radio, and is now available at Archive.org, in 11 parts: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, & 11. The other is on LibriVox, read by Phil Benson.

Sphinx

The Xanadu/Carrol & Graf edition, from 1988, is relatively easy to find, though it has a couple of annoying errors where a page or two of text is duplicated (starting on pages 74 and 265). In the case of the first duplication, this is merely annoying; in the second, two pages from the original are actually missing. The Resonance Bookworks paperback, Bookship, and Nodens paperback versions have the correct original text.

Ebook: Sphinx is also available as an ebook (published by Bookship) from Amazon, iBooks, and other sources.

The Violet Apple

There are a few textual errors in The Violet Apple portion of the Chicago Review Press omnibus, The Violet Apple & The Witch: in a couple of places, pages have been set in the wrong order (though the page numbers don't indicate this), and there is a missing portion of text, probably the equivalent of a page of Lindsay's typescript, which should be on page 221. Of the better text, then, there are two choices, the Sidgwick & Jackson HB, or Science Fiction Special 33 (much less easy to find, but cheaper). But, of course, there's no current way of buying The Witch without The Violet Apple, so you might want to overlook the errors.

M. de Mailly/A Blade for Sale

Resonance Bookworks have issued this in paperback. As have Bookship, in eBook and paperback. The Bookship version (both paperback and ebook) has several pages of annotations.

Ebook: Available as an ebook (published by Bookship) from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, iBooks, and other sources.

Devil's Tor

Resonance Bookworks have published this in both paperback and hardback. The Ayer and Arno Press editions (both now out of print) are facsimile reprints of the first edition. Bookship have a paperback edition.

Ebook: Devil’s Tor is also available as an ebook (published by Bookship) from Amazon, iBooks, and other ebook sources.

The Witch

Only available in one edition, now out of print, both as a PB and HB. Sadly, this means it's an expensive buy.

Amazon

These search links redirect to your local version of Amazon:

Publishers

Cambridge University Press have reissued The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, in paperback.
Paupers Press publish David Powers' book on Lindsay, Anthony Harrison-Barbet's book on E H Visiak. They also sell Borgo Press books, including Colin Wilson's The Haunted Man.
William Holloway's film of A Voyage to Arcturus can be purchased on DVD from Amazon.com.
Resonance BookWorks have reprinted most of David Lindsay's novels.

Miscellaneous

Facsimile Dust Jackets LLD produce high quality replacement dustjackets (newly printed facsimiles of first-edition covers) for old books. Click here for their range of David Lindsay replacement dust jackets.