I would appreciate suggestions regarding the best editions for beginners of Bach's Notebook for Anna Magalena Bach, as well as his WTC. Many thanks.

Schirmer has a couple of sheet music books called "First Lessons in Bach (Book I, II)" containing some easier and short pieces from AM.Bach notebook, French/English suite or partitas. they are good books to start with a lot of variety on technique emphasis. the good thing about these 2 books is that there are editor fingerings marked on every piece, which is very helpful for beginners.

i have Dover edition of WTC, a good cheaper edition but with no fingering marks at all.

Thanks Signa

I also have the Dover edition. It is very good. One of the problems with it, though, aside from the lack of fingerings, is that each prelude or fugue (except for the prelude in C from book 1) is crammed onto two pages. I actually downloaded a photocopy from the Schirmer edition for one of the fugues, because the print in the Dover edition was too small for me (the Schirmer edition had that particular fugue on 4 pages, rather than the 2 in Dover)

I would still recommend this edition (books 1 and 2), and the summary on the back of the book is very interesting.

i like my WTC dover edition, because i always make my own fingerings anyway. but for fugues, it could be difficult because i have never played any fugue yet and don't really know how the best fingering goes for a fugue. i checked the version at 'sheetmusicarchive.net' for fugue no.2 which has fingering marked on it. i need at least some fingering reference for my first try.

i always like the compact sheet music pages because a piece would have less pages to turn. i am not crazy about any larger print edition at all.

I really like the Alfred Masterworks editions of 2/3 Part Inventions and the French Suites (lots of explanatory notes and historical information), so I'd seriously consider them for WTC and Anna Magdalena. My son (10 y.o.) is currently working from Alfred's "First lessons in Bach" which I believe is made up of pieces from Anna Magdalena and WTC.

Thanks for the responses everybody. The Alfred Masterworks sounds interesting due to the extra stuff. I'll check all of these out.