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By Kirsty Doole

Last week the Oxford World’s Classics team were at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford to witness the first Oxford World’s Classics debate. Over three days we invited seven academics who had each edited and written introductions and notes for books in the series to give a short, free talk in the shop. This then culminated in an evening event in Blackwell’s famous Norrington Room where we held a balloon debated, chaired by writer and academic Alexandra Harris.

For those unfamiliar with balloon debates, this is the premise: the seven books, represented by their editors, are in a hot air balloon, and the balloon is going down fast. In a bid to climb back up, we’re going to have to throw some books out of the balloon… but which ones? Each editor spoke for five minutes in passionate defence of their titles before the audience voted. The bottom three books were then “thrown overboard”. The remaining four speakers had another three minutes each to further convince the audience, before the final vote was taken.

The seven books in our metaphorical balloon were:

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (represented by Dinah Birch)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (represented by Helen Small)
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (represented by Roger Luckhurst)
A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (represented by Kathryn Sutherland)
The Poetic Edda (represented by Carolyne Larrington)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (represented by Fiona Stafford)
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (represented by Lesley Brown)

So who was saved? Find out in our slideshow of pictures from the event below:

• The speakers

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Group-slide.jpg

  All seven speakers plus chair, Alexandra Harris, prepare for the debate.

• Alexandra Harris

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Harris-slide.jpg

  Writer and academic Alexandra Harris chaired the event.

• A selection of OWCs

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Table-slide.jpg

  Just a few of the OWCs on sale during the event.

• Dinah Birch on Cranford

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Birch-slide.jpg

  Professor Dinah Birch defends Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.

• Helen Small on Wuthering Heights

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Small-slide.jpg

  Professor Helen Small makes a plea to the audience to save Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

• Roger Luckhurst on Jekyll and Hyde

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Luckhurst-slide.jpg

  Professor Roger Luckhurst makes the case for saving the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

• Kathryn Sutherland on A Memoir of Jane Austen

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Sutherland-slide.jpg

  Professor Kathryn Sutherland argues in favour of saving A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh.

• Austen with meat cleaver

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Austen-slide.jpg

  Kathryn Sutherland tries to boost her cause by bringing this mascot: Jane Austen holding a meat cleaver.

• OWCs on the shelves

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Shelves-slide.jpg

  Look at all our beautiful books!

• Carolyne Larrington on The Poetic Edda

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Larrington-slide.jpg

  Doing her bit for Old Norse, Dr Carolyne Larrington represents The Poetic Edda.

• Fiona Stafford on Pride and Prejudice

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Stafford-slide.jpg

  Would Professor Fiona Stafford succeed in saving Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?

• Lesley Brown on The Nicomachean Ethics

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Brown-slide.jpg

  In the face of stiff literary competition, Lesley Brown strikes a blow for philosophy with a passionate defence of Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics.

• Joint winner! The Poetic Edda

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Edda-slide.jpg

  At the end of the debate we actually had a tie. Joint winners were The Poetic Edda and...

• Joint winner! The Nicomachean Ethics

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Aristotle-slide.jpg

  ...The Nicomachean Ethics! Well done Carolyne and Lesley!

Kirsty Doole is Publicity Manager for Oxford World’s Classics.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

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Image credits: All photos by Kirsty Doole

The post The great Oxford World’s Classics debate appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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I'd never read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It's one of those books where you think you know the plot and the characters and everything, but you've never actually sat down with any of them. I'm pretty sure I've never even watched a movie version, being of a delicate persuasion as far as horror goes. (The hard-core aficionados among you are now snorting scornfully. "Call THAT horror?!" you cry. Sorry.) BUT I needed a book to fill a particular length of time before going away - I needed something to read that wasn't any of the pristine, unstarted books I was leaving with but something I wouldn't have to leave behind still only partway through. And so I chose "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

And before I'd finished the first chapter I came across the following speech by Mr Richard Enfield, "the well-known man about town". (No, I hadn't heard of him either, but I move in fairly modest circles.) He is talking about asking questions. He doesn't hold with doing that. Too dangerous, he thinks ...

"You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name."

And as I read I thought, "That sounds so familiar. That sounds just like my job. That sounds just like writing stories." It really is like that, at least sometimes, isn't it? That sense of avalanching ideas, unexpected heroes, realities lurching into existence and then it being UNTHINKABLE that they should ever not have been. Gravity is as nothing to a story on a roll. You can no more argue with it than you can argue with, say, a sullen teenager.

It does make me a bit nervous about gardening, though.

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