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Title: customer beware
Review: In terms of content this Companion sits comfortably alongside the rest of the Oxford series for scholarship and the other qualities we customarily associate with this publishing house. However, that's where the story ends. In terms of the quality of publication you might expect to pick it up cheap on a news-stand or as a quick and inexpensive reprint in a remainder store. Oxford Companions usually come cloth-bound with dust-jacket, signature-sewn on acid-free paper and are a pleasure to handle. The current (US) 2006 reprint, "printed digitally[and poorly at that]...in order to ensure its continuing availability" (?), has a gloss,cardboard cover with the dust-jacket image printed on it, is perfect-bound (so the pages will eventually drop out), and is on mediocre, non-acid-free paper. I have never seen a poorer quality product from Oxford at this end of the scale: I believe it is totally unacceptable. And the 1st. ed. is apparently still available. Shame on Oxford UP Inc., New York.
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