Wagner Goes Digital: Barry Millington welcomes reprints of classic studies of the composer

Review of Ferdinand Praeger, Wagner As I Knew Him (reprint of London and New York, 1892 edition), Francis Hueffer, Richard Wagner and the Music of the Future (reprint of London, 1874 edition), William James Henderson, Richard Wagner: His Life and his Dramas; a Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of his Work (reprint of New York and London, 1902 edition) and Ernest Newman, A Study of Wagner (reprint of London and New York, 1899 edition).

July 2015, Volume 9, Number 2, 94–6.

Not enough people know about the Cambridge Library Collection, which since 2009 has been generating digital reprints of out-of-print books on a wide range of scholarly subjects. Wagnerians have particular reason to be grateful to the publishers, Cambridge University Press, because the list already includes more than a dozen books relating to the composer, of which the ones discussed here are a selection. Each text has been scanned using more sophisticated technology and quality control than is normal for digitalising purposes. The reproduction of the original typography not only yields a visual appearance consistent with the content, but also offers a more comfortable reading experience than the diminutive, spindly typefaces that have come to dominate contemporary design.