"By"

I wish when people did translations/put out editions/wrote forwards for books, places like Amazon wouldn't list the book by the translator's/editor's/forwarder's name. I went to purchase The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, and the first book is listed as "By H.T. Lowe-Porter, Thomas Mann, and John E. Woods." I don't know who Lowe-Porter is in the book, but John Woods is the dude who translated from German to English. You know, mad props to him because that's an endeavor, but it still doesn't mean that he wrote it. It should just be by Thomas Mann, with special thanks somewhere else on the Amazon page and somewhere in the beginning of he book (on the title page?) for the other guys. This is really, really confusing to kids who have no idea how to do a bibliography and who have no idea who really wrote this book.

This also applies to the date a certain edition was published. I bought The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby by Charles Kingsley and my edition (elsewhere in the house and I'm not getting it right now) has a copyright of, like, 1956 or something. Now, I know, because I know, that the book was written around 1834. But what if someone didn't know that? I just went to make sure I was getting the title right and the edition I saw said 2008. It just makes me insane. And sometimes, the copyright page does not have the original date on it. Trust me, my edition of The Water-Babies doesn't.