Talk:Book of Imaginary Beings

Error?
"Animals in the Form of Spheres - At the time of its writing, some believed that planets and stars were actually living beings, and that the movement of the heavenly bodies was voluntary." Err what?  Oc  t  ane   [ improve me? ] 17.06.11 2305 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.254.112.179 (talk)

Singing Beast?
There's no mention of C. S. Lewis's "Singing Beast" in the edition I own(the 1969 one, apparently the most recent), or the online edition linked here, which seems to be the same. 69.111.189.55 (talk) 21:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * There is "An Animal Imagined by C.S. Lewis" in my edition (pg 18-19; ISBN 0-14-018023-0). You probably have an older edition; mine includes three prefaces, and a note that the edition was "Revised, enlarged and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author". --Gwern (contribs) 22:04 27 May 2008 (GMT)

Mix of original to Borges and not?
People on the Talk page for the article on Peryton claim that this book is a mix of traditional mythological beings, beings invented by specific cited authors, and beings that Borges himself invented. If that's true, then the article about the book should say so. I don't have any further information about this either way, but it would be great if someone has a source that we could cite about it. --Elysdir (talk) 17:25, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Excessive Detail
Pinging a few AfD participants. The list describing the beasts is indiscriminate and excessive, far exceeding the normal plot/content length of 400-700 words. If you could share your thoughts on if it should be trimmed that would be great! VickKiang 23:52, 19 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I actually haven't read this book -- are any of them stuff Borges came up with himself? Seems redundant to just repeat mythological creatures that exist outside it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 02:38, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I also haven't read it, but it seems that almost all of the entries have a WP article. Should I WP:BOLDLY remove it? VickKiang 02:52, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I think removing is fine. Some can be added back if scholarly sources discussed them enough to warrant their inclusion. Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 02:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ (25,000 bytes!) VickKiang 02:57, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * , the article is greatly improved after your edits (and none the worse for the loss of the creature list in my opinion). AllyD (talk) 06:18, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The article seems IMHO decently verifiable, only problem is the Cultural references part. Not sure if it's trivia, and despite it being a mundane fact I couldn't find many refs. Otherwise, IMHO the verification tag probably isn't applicable now. Many thanks! VickKiang 07:15, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
 * These "In popular culture" type sections are often problematic, shifting focus to something other than the article subject when at most there should be a wikilink from that other article. In this case, the Borges text is not mentioned in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World article and such references as I can find do not seem to establish it as important here, so I am deleting that short section. Happy for it to be restored if anyone finds a stronger justification though. AllyD (talk) 08:27, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Spanish version with 1969 edits?
I switched out the section previously entitled "Development" with "Versions" and laid out its development sequence in more detail. In the process I removed a line claiming that the book "was expanded in 1967 and 1969 in Spain". This line was initially uncited, but someone later added a citation to an article in Spanish behind a paywall on jstor. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26864543)

At the very least the original line is misleading, and probably erroneous. The original 1967 expanded edition was definitely published in Argentina, not Spain; its preface is dated to Martinez in Argentina; and the preface to di Giovanni's 1969 translation in collaboration with Borges clearly indicates that their were revisions and additions added specifically to that first english translation.

But I wasn't sure about removing the citation wholesale. I don't know one way or the other whether the changes incorporated into the first english translation were incorporated into subsequent republications of the spanish original, and maybe the article cited clarifies the issue? Las1817 (talk) 23:42, 20 March 2023 (UTC)