Editor's Log
This is the log for 2003! See the side menu for the current log.
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2003-12-28
Between bouts of seasonally-induced indigestion and hangover, I've been working on Hakluyt's Voyages — although “bogged down” might be a more accurate description. This is a monumental work, a compliation of all kinds of travel descriptions from before the 16th Century. And being written around 1590, it is sadly lacking in the kinds of organisation which modern readers expect (even given that this text is from a 19th century edition and reorganised by the editor). It also contains copious blocks of latin, and occasionally other languages. And some of the "chapters" constitute entire books in themselves — Hakluyt being essentially a compiler of the work of others.
What to do with this "mess"? Well, so far, I've made a global attempt to identify headings and suitable "chapter" divisions. This has resulted in a usable work, with a table of contents which is badly in need of editing but reasonably functional. I need to revisit and remove some of the divisions and possibly add some. I also need to remove the Latin headings from the ToC.
Meanwhile, I found that one "chapter" was actually a complete work from another author (John Davis) — Hakluyt had included an extract, but the last editor — Edmund Goldsmid — decided that "the original work is so very rare and occupies so small a space that it has been deemed eligible to reprint it entire." So I have extracted that section and created a separate web edition of John Davis' The Worldes Hydrographical Discription, which is a fascinating discussion of the possibility of a Northwest passage (somewhat mystifyingly placed by Hakluyt under the heading of the Azores. There look to be one or two other very long sections that I might similarly extract and turn into separate web books.
Another problem with this text is the notes: there are footnotes, marginal notes and also "sidenotes" — which seem to be the original marginal subheadings. All of these are currently embedded within the text. The footnotes I should be able to extract and reposition at the end each division. Some are rather long and definitely need repositioning. But I don't yet know what to do with the marginalia.
2003-12-16
Now working on a Travel and Exploration theme, with what is turning out to be a huge crop of books to be converted. And I've surprised myself with how many in this category are already in the collection.
So far added are:
- Travels in West Africa, by Mary H. Kingsley
- From London to Land's End, by Daniel Defoe
- Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, by Thomas Mitchell
- Travels in Morocco, by James Richardson
Also added some more fiction:
- The Evil Guest, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
- The Virgin and the Gypsy, by D. H. Lawrence
- The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, by D. H. Lawrence
2003-12-08
Well, Mrs. Beeton is more or less done (I could certainly do more with linking, e.g. providing a recipe index, but the basic reformatting is complete. And the Paine biog. of Twain is now done too — I've cleaned up all the embedded inline notes (converting them to "footnotes"), and also numbered all the notes and made links to them from their point of reference. And I'm adding images, in collaboration with a librarian in the US — he's scanning, and I'm inserting. So far so good.
Meanwhile, I somehow got into the works of Sheridan Le Fanu and converted some of his works. All good fun.
2003-11-22
After a lot of distraction to do with whether the ebooks should be coded in XML, and how, I've started work on marking up Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management , which is chock-full of interesting problems.
2003-11-18
Following a reader’s request, I created an author page for Mark Twain, and converted a couple of his books (yes, the obvious ones!). I've also marked up a biography of the man, the one by A. B. Paine, which has been an interesting exercise, and led to further improvements in the style sheet.
2003-11-09
Nothing like being back at work to really cut into ebook production! Although I'll also admit to a slight lapse in enthusiasm after the huge effort last month.
Anyway, today I've continued with Lewis Carroll, working up a copy of A Tangled Tale. This is good fun, containing lots of "puzzles" to solve, and also fun to mark up, containing as it does lots of equations and the like. Probably still a little rough, but serviceable.
2003-10-23
Another burst of enthusiasm (due to holidays): I've done all the available works by F. Scott Fitzgerald: three novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night; and two short story collections: Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age.
2003-10-22
Samuel Butler's Erewhon.
2003-10-20
Yikes! Too much caffeine? Or too much time on my hands? Over the last week (mostly the last three days) I've added a bumper crop of titles:
First, an edition of The Dhammapada.
A bunch of works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Bobok ; The Brothers Karamazov ; The Crocodile ; The Double ; The Gambler ; Gentle Spirit ; The Insulted and the Injured ; Notes from Underground ; Poor Folk ; and The Possessed.
Also The Haunted Hotel : A Mystery of Modern Venice / by Wilkie Collins
And finally three titles by Ivan Turgenev: A House of Gentlefolk ; On the Eve ; and Rudin.
2003-10-13
Talk about eclectic! Today I've added: Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, and two works by Knut Hamsun, Hunger and Shallow Soil.
2003-10-12
Added several more works over the weekend: Twilight in Italy and The Trespasser, by D. H. Lawrence; The Fur Country, by Jules Verne; and The Dream of the Red Chamber, by Cao Xuequin, the first Chinese novel.
2003-10-09
After some checking, I found that a number of titles hadn't been catalogued, and therefore I'd missed the fact that we've reached 600 titles in the collection! Oh well ...
In celebration of that milestone, I've added another story by Chesterton: The Man who was Thursday. I might actually read this one!
2003-10-06
Back with the faeries! At the request of a reader, I've added the last two Fairy Books edited by Andrew Lang, the Olive and the Green.
Also, I added A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, translated by James Legge, mainly because I happened to be reading about modern day Tibet when this caught my eye. I also thought that this was the journey which inspired the "Monkey" saga, "Journey to the West", but apparently that was a much later journey by a monk to bring back Buddhist scriptures.
2003-10-04
I'm working on Gibbon's Decline and Fall. It's taking a while, mainly because of the very extensive notes, both from Gibbon and from the editor of the edition used. I've also found and repaired some duplication and misplacement of text, so I think we'll end up with something rather more handsome than presently available online editions. Once I've finished with the damned notes!
2003-09-30
Added The Praise of Folly, by Erasmus, about which I confess ignorance, but it was on the Western Canon reading list, so ...
2003-09-28
Added Macaulay's translation of The History of Herodotus. This is our second translation of this, and seems a superior edition, with many footnotes. It also contains a lot of tranliterated greek, which I should do something about. In theory, I could have this display in the greek alphabet, but ... this needs some scholarly advice, I think. Inventiveness and imagination, coupled with HTML skills, can take you only so far, and this is heading into dangerous territory. On the other hand ... they're only ebooks!
2003-09-19
Added The Gulistan of Sa'di, by Saadi, 13th Century Persian poet. And also the Fitzgerald "translation" of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, for the sake of some kind of completeness. (Or because it was there.)
Also done is The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi, another by Richard Burton, a curious little work which was made to look like a translation, but was in fact authored by Burton himself.
2003-09-17
Added Charlotte Bronte's Villette. Only need Shirley to complete the set.
2003-09-12
Still working on Burton — today I create a web edition of The Life of Sir Richard Burton by Thomas Wright, which has scrubbed up quite nicely I think, after some trouble with the numbering of the notes. This web book differs from my standard, in that the notes are all contained in a "Footnotes" section rather than appearing immediately following the paragraph in which they are referenced (or even at the end of that chapter). There were just too many (712!) to move them, so this will have to do.
While fiddling with the notes, I also added a superscript style to the style-sheet, which uses a smaller font size. This means the note references don't intrude so much, and don't alter the line spacing (at least, not noticeably).
2003-09-10
I'm currently working on Richard Burton (the explorer). The previously-done abridged Arabian Nights has been updated, and two new web editions produced: Personal narrative of a pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah and First footsteps in East Africa.
The first of these was very troublesome, with many inconsistencies and infelicities in formatting, as well as the inclusion of original page numbers. These page numbers have been stripped, but this left the text with many hundreds of broken paragraphs, which had to be re-joined manually. Furthermore, volume one made no distinction between hyphens and em-dashes, which also required a great deal of manual correction. I think I'm presently up to Chapter IX with that.
The second text is much better behaved, and done in a fraction of the time.
2003-09-6
Added two works by Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (of course) and the possibly more interesting futuristic novel The Last Man.
Also continuing work on updating author pages, adding pictures and more biographical details, as well as links to works.
2003-09-1
Added another work by Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning.
2003-08-31
Added New Grub Street by George Gissing.
2003-08-29
Added the Monsieur Lecoq stories (English and French versions) by Émile Gaboriau. More crime!
2003-08-25
OK, things have been too quiet on the log front, but things have been happening. I've added a new edition of Dante's Divine Comedy, illustrated by Gustave Dore. Plus a few classic works of crime fiction by G.K. Chesterton ( The Complete Father Brown), Fergus Hume ( The Mystery of a Hansom Cab), and Anna Katharine Green ( Initials Only). There's also a new "themes" page, Crime and Mystery, which reveals a small but growing collection of this genre.
I've also put in some effort (OK, a lot of effort) on updating the Sherlock Holmes books, which turned out to be riddled with scanning errors. These were the first web books I created, way back in 1998, but they are now very much improved.
2003-08-01
Unfortunately, the day job has been very demanding over the last two weeks, so not much progress. However, I have completed the following: four additional works by D. H. Lawrence — The Ladybird, The Fox, The Captain's Doll and The Plumed Serpent.
I've also done four works by E. J. Banfield, The Confessions of a Beachcomber, My Tropic Isle, Tropic Days, and Last Leaves from Dunk Island. This places all four Dunk Island books online in the one place for the first time.
I've also done the complete set of Fairy books by Andrew Lang, and an edition of Grimm's stories, the Household Tales translation of Margaret Hunt.
2003-07-19
At last, I have "finished" with Jules Verne. Actually, there are quite a few of his works not yet available, but the present collection represents at least all of the major and best-known works, plus a few others.
Meanwhile, I've also converted a translation of The Mabinogion and started looking at availability of various Norse sagas, and the Nibelungenlied — all this because of a chance conversation at lunch on Thursday, which will perhaps give you an insight into the way this site progresses: basically, by whim and chance. But all of these can be fitted into my next "theme" project (see below).
And being once again distracted from my expected course, I have converted the Memoirs of Casanova, which surprisingly read well and are quite entertaining, and only a little bit naughty by today's standards. (The distraction is due to Casanova having written a work of Utopian fiction, which I discovered while reading about Jules Verne. You see, it _is_ all connnected.)
2003-07-16
Added A Treatise on Human Nature by David Hume. It was probably about time I got back to some non-fiction, and some more philosophy texts. Generally, fiction is so much easier, because it usually has simple divisions into chapters, and no footnotes, whereas non-fiction can have a quite complex structure. But the Hume was simple compared to some of Kant's works, which I tackled a long time ago and probably need to revisit in the light of experience.
I also have another theme in mind, working title "From Myth to Sci-Fi, 4000 years of Fantasy", in which i collect together works on Mythology and religion, and early works of fantasy and science fiction. But I should probably finish off Verne first.
2003-07-13
Returning refreshed from my holiday in Tahiti, I've completed work on John Oxley's Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales. This edition lacks the illustrations and maps, unfortunately. I'll have to see about that ...
2003-07-02
Completed works of Henry Handel Richardson. Which is not to say they are the complete works, only that I've done all that are or seem to be available right now.
2003-07-01
Added works of Henry Handel Richardson. Not complete, but close.
2003-07-01
Added Gustave Dore's illustrations to Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. And rather gruelling it was too! Probably four hours work involved in checking each image, finding out where to put it in the text, putting it there, and indexing. But the result is a very pleasing edition. Still completely unreadable, but at least there are now some very nice pictures!
2003-06-30
Added T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Something I've been meaning to get to for some time.
Added The man who could work miracles, by H. G. Wells. This was made into a rather nice little English film by Alexander Korda.
2003-06-16
Done: the two major works by Bram Stoker: Dracula and The lair of the white worm.
2003-06-10
Began work on Flaubert, converting Madame Bovary.
2003-06-09
Today I resumed work on Russian authors, creating web-books for Gogol and Gorky.
Meanwhile, I'm continuing efforts on metadata, in at least two directions. First I'm trying to provide accurate metadata in the form of dublin core in the header of title pages — but ideally this needs to extend to the individual chapters/parts/etc. Second, I'm trying to get the whole site indexed by the Open Archives initiative. Finally, I'm also intending to make a MARC file of the entire collection available to libraries who may wish to add records to their catalogues; I'm still thinking about how best to present that.
2003-06-08
I've been working on Machiavelli: firstly, updating and improving The Prince; secondly, adding a number of other works, and creating a couple of Biogs. from the introductions to some of these works. We now have the most complete collection of Machiavelli available in one place.
2003-05-31
Added Gummere's translation of Beowulf. Continuing work on upgrading older ebooks: Anne Brontë done today.
2003-05-24
Added Joyce's Ulysses. Needs more work, being notoriously incomprehensible.
Also, someone has kindly pointed out that Mill's The Subjection of Women is badly corrupt, with many errors. I've cleaned up a few obvious bloopers, but there are so many errors it may be irretrievable. Q. Is a bad text better than no text, or worse?
2003-05-22
Resumed cleaning up of older ebooks. E.g. Moby Dick.
2003-05-19
More Tolstoy: What Men Live By, and other tales, Ivan the Fool, The Kreutzer Sonata, Master and Man and Hadji Murad
2003-05-18
Bored with Verne for a bit. Today I've done the major works of Tolstoy: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, The Cossacks, War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Resurrection
2003-05-17
I've been ploughing through Jules Verne — almost finished but they still need checking. Meanwhile, I've just added a page for Knut Hamsun, plus his novel Pan, from which I've extracted a biography by Edwin Bjorkman.
2003-05-5/6
Working on more HG Wells: History of Mr. Polly and In the days of the Comet
2003-05-4
Done some more stories by Guy de Maupassant: Une Vie, Strong as Death, Pierre And Jean, Bel Ami and Yvette
2003-05-3
H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia and The door in the wall, and other stories.
And Thackeray's Vanity Fair. There's a lot of Thackeray, so I may or may do more, depending on energy levels.
2003-05-2
Converted Samuel Butler: A Sketch, by Henry Festing Jones. Also tidied the Samuel Butler page, and the RIchard Burton page. I'd really like to tackle some of the Burton from PG, which looks v. interesting.
2003-05-1
May day! I should have worked on something appropriate to the day — I think there's something by Kropotkin I could have done. But I've done another book by Wilkie Collins instead: Armadale. Still a little tidying up to do — encoding letters for example, but essentially ready.
2003-04-30
Major update of the Henry James page, adding dates to all the titles, and sorting into chronological order. I guess some users might prefer an alphabetic list of works, but I think it is useful to see the progression of works over time.
Also converted a biog. of James, and his Turn of the Screw.
Also upgraded a couple of works by Locke.
2003-04-29
Converted several more Henry James': The Ambassadors, Portrait of a Lady and Washington Square.
2003-04-28
Converted another Hardy: The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid. I've also tried a new style sheet feature with this: fixing the maximum width of the text (to 33em). The result looks very nice, and prints superbly. (I've also centered the text on the page/screen.) Still thinking, but I think I'm going to roll this out to all the ebooks.
2003-04-26
Converted Laurence Sterne's Life and opinions of Tristram Shandy and A sentimental journey through France and Italy.
2003-04-20
Converted two more Woolf texts: The Waves and Three Guineas.
2003-04-16
Added the final volume of Proust's Remembrance of things past (thanks PG-Aus!).
2003-04-14
I've reworked Keynes' General Theory from the version at PG-Aus, making it generally more readable and fixing a number of things. This is available now, although I probably need to do a few more things to it. Also, the footnotes were not included. I've asked if they can be provided.
2003-03-31
One more volume of Proust added (vol. 6). Just waiting for the final volume before announcing. I'd also like to cross-reference some of the translator's notes.
2003-03-30
Three books by Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White, No Name and The Moonstone. All slightly complicated by the "eccentric" division of the works. I should also do Armadale, which would complete the list of well-known works by Collins. Plus add links to the works written jointly with Dickens.
2003-03-29
Added three more volumes of Proust (Moncrieff trans.) courtesy of PGAUS.
2003-03-28
Still working on Shelley. Bit of a nightmare actually. Need to go through all the plays and replace H3 tags with appropriate classes (done all the SCENE's, need to do speakers and stage directions). Long way to go yet.
2003-03-26
Started work on Marcel Proust's Ŕ la Recherche du temps perdu. We have two volumes in French (1&2), and two in English (2&3, Moncrieff translation).
2003-03-25
Started work on the Complete Shelley. This make extensive use of notes, referenced to specific lines of verse. Poems have line numbers on the right. So I have to keep the line numbering, which I can do as <span class="vln">N</span> — I guess. Lot of work here. Also, none of the poems are indented, so indentifying verse from prose is going to be a task.
2003-03-23
Today I completed a new edition of Tennyson's "Lady Clare". This differs from previous ebooks in making full use of CSS for image layout — some of the images obviously originally had text embedded, so I used the position property to restore the intended layout. I also included use of the page-break property to ensure that, when printed, images would not be split between pages. This edition was derived from a PG edition, at etext04/ldyclh10h, which makes for an interesting comparison.
2003-03-20
2003-03-18
The Journal to Stella, by Jonathan Swift
2003-03-14
The Golden Bough, by Sir James Frazer
Two works by John Fiske: Myths and Myth-makers The Unseen World and other essays
2003-01-18
Plays of Anton Chekhov: Ivanoff, Swan Song, The Sea-Gull, Uncle Vanya
2003-01-17
This is the inaugural log for the ebooks pages. Here's what's up right now:
I'm working on George Eliot. Daniel Deronda is up, but missing about half the final chapter. PW has volunteered to type that up this weekend. I've also done Mill on the Floss (something to do with dentistry?) which looks solid, and started work on two short pieces, Brother Jacob and The lifted veil. Finally, found a useful site at Princeton which has some other Eliot, which I should be able to harvest. Need to send the Deronda to PG when complete.
Also now have a metadata project underway. I have a cgi script to assist the process of creating DC for the title pages — done a couple, 400+ to go! This also creates xml, for OAI harvesting. John Ocker has sent me some perl scripts he devised for OAI serving and indexing. Will look at those when I return from Sydney.
Still need to revisit all old books and update for hyphens etc.
2003-01-09
New web books:
- Boswell's Journal of a tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson and Life of Samuel Johnson
- Anton Chekhov, short stories, and Letters of Anton Chekhov to his family and friends
- Joseph Conrad, complete works
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot
- Lucretius, Of the nature of things
- Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur
- Alexander Pope's translations of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer
- Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub
- H.G. Wells, selected works (more coming soon)
2002-12-19
Announcing: William Morris new web-editions.
2002-12-11
Announcing: The Works of Charles Dickens
