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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of works by John Buchan/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 03:11, 3 November 2014 [1].

List of works by John Buchan

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List of works by John Buchan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): SchroCat (talk) 18:05, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

John Buchan was one of the most prolific and high-profile British writers of the 20th century. In between writing he was a barrister, a publisher, a lieutenant colonel in the Intelligence Corps, the Director of Information—reporting directly to prime minister David Lloyd George—during the First World War and a Unionist MP who served as Governor General of Canada. He had written five books before he left university, and was a historian—including an impressive set of works on military history—biographer and poet, although nowadays he is probably best known as the author of thrillers, which include The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle.

This is a fresh bibliography, made partly from a limited one on the main Buchan article, but greatly expanded and now brought into line with MOS requirements, and fully sourced throughout. – SchroCat (talk) 18:05, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A lovely list. A few thoughts -
  • Why are edited works first? It feels like they'd be a more natural fit at the end, even if the first thing he published was an edited work.
  • I appreciate exactly what you are saying, and it's something I mulled over for a while, but instead plumped for chronological as being the most neutral way to approach this. All the tables on the page are in chronological order, so novels to poetry all start with the sequential 1894 to 1898. - SchroCat (talk) 09:10, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "List of works..." sounds very comprehensive, but there are presumably a number of uncollected short pieces in magazines etc (compare the various pieces collected in The Far Islands and Other Tales of Fantasy). I think omitting these is reasonable, but would it be worth explicitly addressing this somewhere?
  • "The Fifteenth-Scottish-Division 1914-1919" (1926) is probably an artefact of strange old British Museum cataloguing not liking brackets, and I am almost completely confident the title is actually "The Fifteenth (Scottish) Division 1914-1919".
  • "Nelson's History of the War 24 volumes" - perhaps "Nelson's History of the War [24 volumes]"? I also think this is itself an error in the cataloguing - he surely didn't author all 24 volumes! Three of the 1916/17 volumes appear to be his individual contributions to this, and either he was listed because he was an overall editor or because he was individually prominent.
  • Let me go back to the sources for this and see if I can bring a little more clarity to this point, although I think you're probably right - SchroCat (talk) 09:10, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The BL source seems to suggest all of this was written by Buchan (as does this and this. David Danieel (in the Book and Magazine Collector) calls it "a mammoth project encompassing a million-and-a-quarter words, written between 1915 and 1919 as events unfolded". Gale's Contemporary Authors confirms he wrote this himself: "On the eve of World War I, Buchan became ill with a duodenal ulcer and was confined to his bed. He spent this time productively, however, writing the hefty Nelson's History of the War and the popular shocker The Thirty-Nine Steps". - SchroCat (talk) 08:25, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I shall ponder the last point: I'm not a big fan of external links within an article (or table) body, but it may be a worthwhile step in this case.
  • A quick look at the MoS suggests this may not be a good idea, per WP:ELPOINTS. We have the following links at the bottom of the page, pointing to the main sources where the works can be accessed, and I think we may have to leave it at that:

Many thanks for your thoughts: I've added a tweak already, and will sort the rest shortly, reporting back when all done. Thanks again - SchroCat (talk) 09:10, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Andrew, All now covered. Thanks very much for all the time and effort you've taken on this: it's much appreciated! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 12:44, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support, along with a few unimportant quibbles:

  • We have variants of the name of the publisher Thomas Nelson/ T. Nelson Publishers and plain Nelson.
  • William Blackwood & Sons – at one point is William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, but mostly just William Blackwood & Sons.
  • P. Davies is Peter Davies – one of Barrie's lost boys, who became a publisher. His firm seems to have been based in both Edinburgh (Massacre of Glencoe) and London (Men and Deeds).
  • Blackwell Publishing or Blackwell Publishing, Oxford?
  • Boston, MA – I think the usual abbreviation for Massachusetts is Mass, rather than MA, though I may be quite wrong.
  • Clarendon Press (Nine Brasenose Worthies) – based in Oxford, not London, according to this.

This is a beautfully constructed and painstakingly researched page, and I don't see how it could be done better. Meets all the FL criteria, in my view. – Tim riley talk 09:18, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an article worth linking with "Director of Information"?♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:33, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not that I can find, unfortunately. There is one for the department, but not the position. - SchroCat (talk) 20:59, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support A pristine list, excellent work!♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:40, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks - much appreciated! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 07:45, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support

  • There were only a couple issues, listed below, but I went ahead and fixed them myself.
  • "The following year he was awarded a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford; shortly after his arrival he also published his first novel, Sir Quixote of the Moors, which he dedicated to Gilbert Murray, his university tutor;[5] by the time he left the university he had published five books,[1] including Scholar-Gipsies, the first work of non-fiction he wrote" - wow, and I thought I made really long sentences. That second(!) semicolon should really be a period, after "tutor".
  • "The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies" in the poetry section is sorting under "T"
  • Completely optional, but if you found this review helpful, consider reviewing World Fantasy Award for Best Collection up above. --PresN 17:52, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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