In no particular order:
Mrs. Humphry Ward, Helbeck of Bannisdale. Arguably her best novel, with characters facing believable spiritual and psychological conflicts, plus (for Mrs. Ward) relatively taut plotting. Its vexed attitudes to both Catholicism and anti-Catholicism are intriguing.
W. M. Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond. And not just because I wrote about it in Book One. You'd have thought enough people would be into an unreliable narrator with characters grumping away in the footnotes...
Emily Lawless, With Essex in Ireland. Besides having sharp things to say about anti-Irish prejudices, albeit within a Unionist context, it's...brace yourselves...actually funny. The novel parodies just about every major trend in both historical fiction and the earlier national tale, and it has a narrator who sends up Edmund Spenser. (I actually proposed an edition of this a few years back, but the reviewers didn't think the book would sell, alas.)
A non-kiddified edition of Johann Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson. I was hoping to teach it this semester, only to discover that the only translations currently available have all been made suitable for younger readers.
Grace Aguilar, The Vale of Cedars. OK, this is very niche, but it's a nice rebuttal to Ivanhoe, not to mention Aguilar's only "Jewish" novel aimed at a general audience.
Unaltered editions of George MacDonald's religious fiction. Modern reprints of MacDonald have a bad habit of being reworked for contemporary religious tastes, and therefore cannot be used in classrooms (or for scholarly purposes).
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii. Despite my ongoing resistance to my father's suggestion that I edit this novel, there still ought to be a scholarly edition, given that it was something of a cult read at the time (and led to statues, among other things). And, despite the bad writing contest, Bulwer-Lytton is a major Victorian novelist--he ought to be easier to find.
Charlotte Yonge, The Daisy Chain. Granted, this novel annoys a lot of people, but it's nevertheless one of Yonge's most significant efforts.
Re: "Unaltered editions of George MacDonald's religious fiction. "
Is that the George MacDonald that C.S. Lewis so much admired? The one the un-named protagonist of CSL's "The Great Divorce" meets in heaven? The one CSL gave the only great laugh line of the book to (MacDonald tells the protagonist he shouldn't do something, the protagonist replies "God forbid!", and MacDonald says "He does.")? … Given the immense popularity of CSL among (a certain class of) Christians, I would assume there is a slop-over interest in MacDonald that would keep some of his works in print! Could you say a bit - a paragraph, a hint - about the KIND of reworking his works are subjected to "for contemporary religious tastes"? (Was he perhaps a bit more thoughtful, a bit less "fundo", than a lot of current CSL fans? Was his Christianity too … liberal?)
Posted by: Allen Hazen | February 04, 2016 at 12:05 AM
If your publisher of Robert Elsmere will take it on, and you can fit it in down the track, why not edit Helbeck yourself?
Posted by: Jacqui | February 04, 2016 at 05:04 AM
Quite remarkable, actually. Most of "your" authors are irredeemably minor, but Thackeray, Bulwer-Lytton, and Mrs. Ward are in another category (or perhaps two other categories). Given the sheer number of books in print .... I wonder if OUP would be willing to explain dropping Henry Esmond.
Posted by: Mr Punch | February 04, 2016 at 11:45 AM
I know that there are modern editions of MacDonald which modernize the language, but do they also change the theology? Seems pretty unforgivable...
Posted by: Aron Wall | February 05, 2016 at 12:31 AM
I think it's more modernizing + abridging that's the issue (i.e., anything odd that happens to the theology is a byproduct of cutting the books down, not necessarily the direct intent).
Posted by: Miriam | February 05, 2016 at 09:57 AM
LP-- Thanks for response to my question! So, the "contemporary religious tastes" in deference to which MacDonald's work gets modified is not so much a matter of doctrine as a general modern distaste for lengthy theologizing? … It's not the same at all, but I am reminded of a line in Michael Shaara's preface to his novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, "The Killier Angels"-- he says that, though he has tried to make the action consistent with what is known historically, the dialogue he has written is in one respect unrealistic: modern readers couldn't take the explicit religiosity of much ordinary speech in the 1860s.
Posted by: Allen Hazen | February 06, 2016 at 12:59 AM
Actual quote from Shaara, "The Killer Angels" (copyright 1974). Its from the "To the Reader", page xiii of the paperback ed'n I have.
"I have not consciously changed any fact. … I have changed some of the language. It was a naive and sentimental time, and men spoke in windy phrases. I thought it necessary to update some of the words so that the religiosity and naiveté of the time, which were genuine, would not seem too quaint to the modern ear."
Posted by: Allen Hazen | February 06, 2016 at 01:05 AM
I am pleased to let you know that The Last Days of Pompeii is apparently back in print:
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Pompeii-Edward-George-Bulwer-Lytton/dp/1495958469/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1454809523&sr=8-2&keywords=The+Last+Days+of+Pompeii
Posted by: Donald A. Coffin | February 06, 2016 at 08:46 PM
The Daisy Chain is also apparently now in prin:
http://www.amazon.com/Daisy-Chain-Charlotte-Mary-Yonge/dp/1893103226/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454809759&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Daisy+Chain
Posted by: Donald A. Coffin | February 06, 2016 at 08:49 PM
What *claims* to be an unabridges version of The Swiss Family Robinson is also in print:
http://www.amazon.com/Family-Robinson-Sterling-Unabridged-Classics/dp/1402726023/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454809952&sr=1-1&keywords=the+swiss+family+robinson+unabridged
Posted by: Donald A. Coffin | February 06, 2016 at 08:53 PM
These are all unedited scraped/OCR'd texts turned into print-on-demand hardcopy (a peculiarly parasitic form of publishing, not quite as bad as hardcopy versions of Wikipedia articles). The British Library's facsimile prints of its own digitized texts are usually OK, albeit lightly inked, but the scraped editions usually aren't worth it unless there's no front-facing digital text anywhere (and even then, the results can be...scary).
Posted by: Miriam | February 06, 2016 at 10:37 PM