Cover to Cover · annotated editions

Read a classic cover to cover, in the original, in nearly half the time.

The text is never altered and never simplified. Every hard word, old sense, and name is explained in place, on the page, before you reach it.

The opening of every book is free to read. No account needed.

A Christmas Carol · Stave One

What's Happening

London, the 1840s. The story opens by insisting, at some length, that a man named Marley is dead. The narrator will not let you move on until you believe it.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register (the official book of records) of his burial was signed by the clergyman (the priest), the clerk (the church official who keeps the records), the undertaker (the man who arranges funerals), and the chief mourner (the person who leads the mourning at a funeral, usually the closest relative). Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change ('Change: the Royal Exchange, London's trading floor), for anything he chose to put his hand to.

What It Says

Four officials signed the burial record, and Scrooge signed it too, a man whose signature was trusted on the London trading floor. Dickens is stacking witnesses. The death is a matter of public record, not rumour.

You've started Moby-Dick. Twice.

Somewhere there is a bookmark still sitting sixty pages into a book everyone says is great. Not because it was too hard. Because every third sentence sent you to a dictionary, and then to your phone, and then the evening was gone and the book was still on page sixty.

You gave up on War and Peace at the third party.

Natásha turned out to also be Natálya Ilyínichna, and also Countess Rostóva. Half the dialogue slipped into French. Four hundred pages in, you could no longer tell who was in the room, which meant you could no longer tell who was lying to whom, which meant you were reading words and following nothing.

Neither time did you find the book too difficult. You found it too interrupted. These books are funnier, faster and more gossipy than their reputations suggest, but only if you can stay inside the paragraph long enough to notice. That is what this edition does. It takes the interruptions out, and changes nothing else. The same book, unabridged, with the lookups already done and the room already named. You will finish it.

What's on the page

Five kinds of help, placed before your eye arrives.

Nothing to tap, nothing to look up, nothing to set up.

A short panel before each chapter: who, where, and what to expect. Orientation, never spoilers.

What's Happening

Petersburg, July 1805. An evening reception at the house of a woman close to the imperial court. Nothing happens here but talk, and the talk is the point.

The chapter's cast in one glance, each person identified in a line, with no more than the story has told. Every name a character answers to, gathered in one place.

Who's Here

Anna Pávlovna Schérer — maid of honour to the Empress; she is giving the party · also "Annette"

Prince Vasíli Kurágin — a court official, first to arrive · also "Vasíli", "Kurágin"

Inline glosses

Small blue explanations right after the hard words. Every rare word, old sense, and name, where it stands.

He was a man of a rugged (harsh, rough-lined) countenance (face) that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty (sparing with words) and embarrassed (awkward) in discourse (conversation).

Beside the hardest paragraphs, a note restates the sentence and shows how to read it.

What It Says

Strip the clauses away and the sentence says one thing. Nobody can describe Hyde. He looks deformed, yet no one can point to any actual deformity. The wrongness is not in a feature. It is in the whole man.

The Marginalia

When a sentence still fights back, ask. The Marginalia knows only the chapters you have opened, so it cannot spoil what you have not reached. It has not read ahead either.

Where the evening actually goes.

Take A Christmas Carol, 28,435 words in the original English. It holds 2,227 words and names a modern reader has to look up. Here is what that costs, and what it costs here.

Reading it on your own, dictionary beside you

Only 3 hours 10 of that is reading. Two thirds of your evening goes somewhere other than the book.

Reading it here, explanations already on the page

Nothing was cut and nothing was simplified. The lookups were done in advance.

Nine hours becomes five and a half. The text untouched, the dictionary work done. You just read.

Figures for A Christmas Carol from this edition's own count. Reading speed 150 words a minute; a dictionary lookup taken at 10 seconds, a glance at a printed explanation at 2. The dictionary column counts each hard word once, though in practice you would look many of them up more than once. This edition explains every occurrence, which is why its count is higher.

Choose your book.

Every title is annotated chapter by chapter and reviewed before it reaches you.

Read the opening. Then decide.

The first pages of every book are free, with no account and no card. Real annotated text, not a sample page. If you are still reading when it runs out, that is your answer. One payment for that book and it is yours to read and re-read for good. No subscription, no expiry.

Annotated editions of the classics