Happy 15th Anniversary! (Part 1)

September 30, 2015
15th anniversary banner

Semper ad Meliora (Always towards better things)

Fifteen years ago, on October 1, 2000, Distributed Proofreaders volunteers began “preserving history one page at a time” by preparing public-domain e-books for Project Gutenberg. Since then, DP has contributed over 30,000 unique titles. In honor of DP’s 15th Anniversary (and the 5th Anniversary of both DP Italy and Hot off the Press), here is the first of a series of posts recognizing DP’s first contribution to Project Gutenberg, and every 1,000th offering thereafter.

1 The first book that DP posted to Project Gutenberg was an English translation of The Iliad of Homer. This is believed to have occurred November 22, 2000 (record-keeping at both DP and PG was not as meticulous back then). The Iliad is a classic Greek poem set during the last few weeks of the ten-year Trojan War between the ancient city of Troy and a group of Greek states. The poem relates a fateful quarrel between the Greek commander-in-chief, Agamemnon, and one of his captains, Achilles. The putative author, Homer, is thought to have been born more than 100 years after the events in the poem.

1000 DP believes that its 1,000th book was Tales of St. Austin’s, by the great British humorist P.G. Wodehouse. This was posted to Project Gutenberg on February 19, 2003. It is a collection of amusing “school stories” plus a few essays, published in 1903, and was one of Wodehouse’s first published books. Wodehouse was one of the most widely read writer of humorous novels in the 20th century. He left a career in banking to become a successful author, lyricist and playwright.

2000 On September 3, 2003, just short of seven months later, Project Gutenberg posted the 2,000th book from DP. This was The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: The First (‘Bad’) Quarto. Published in 1603, this edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet was lost until discovered in 1823. It was first believed to be an earlier version of the play, then believed to be a pirated copy, possibly created by an actor who had played a minor part in the play and had reconstructed it from memory.

Anatomy of Melancholy

3000 Just three and a half months later, on January 14, 2004, DP posted the 3,000th book: Robert Burton‘s masterful study of depression, The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621. The Project Gutenberg version is based on a 19th Century edition, in which the introduction notes, “The work now restored to public notice has had an extraordinary fate. At the time of its original publication it obtained a great celebrity, which continued more than half a century. During that period few books were more read, or more deservedly applauded. It was the delight of the learned, the solace of the indolent, and the refuge of the uninformed.” The writer of that introduction could not have predicted that the book’s “extraordinary fate” would include being made available to all in cyberspace.

4000 On April 6, 2004, less than three months later, DP posted its 4,000th book. Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras (Adventures of Captain Hatteras), by Jules Verne (1864, French), demonstrates that DP has a long tradition of producing books in languages other than English. Verne’s adventure novel contains two parts: “Les Anglais au pôle Nord” (“The English at the North Pole”) and “Le Désert de glace” (“The Desert of Ice”). After a mutiny destroys their ship, Captain Hatteras and what is left of his crew spend the winter on an ice island, build a boat from a shipwreck, and travel to a volcano situated right on the Pole.

5000 On August 24, 2004, a little over four months later, the third milestone book in a calendar year and fourth in a rolling year was posted. This was A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John William Cousin, and published in 1910 by Everyman’s Library. There’s a good reason DP chose this book as its 5,000th contribution, as Everyman’s Library shares DP’s core philosophy. In 1906, the founder of Everyman’s Library, J.M. Dent, resolved to create a library of 1,000 carefully selected books from around the world in the hope of making them as easily accessible as possible. In those days, books were expensive, and Everyman’s Library was among the first to publish affordable editions of classic works. Like Project Gutenberg, it paved the way to a new approach to making books widely accessible. It is fitting to celebrate this milestone with the quotation from Milton’s Areopagitica that Dent had printed on the very first volume of Everyman’s Library: “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured upon purpose to a life beyond life.”

Next: The celebration continues with milestones 6,000 to 10,000.

These 15th Anniversary posts were contributed by WebRover, a DP volunteer.

 

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Project Gutenberg celebrates 50,000 titles

September 18, 2015

Project Gutenberg 50,000 Books

Distributed Proofreaders proudly brings to you Project Gutenberg’s 50,000th title, John Gutenberg, First Master Printer, His Acts, and most remarkable Discourses, and his Death, by Franz von Dingelstedt, translated from the German and published in 1860.

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I couldn’t think of a more appropriate title to celebrate this milestone. Johannes Gutenberg is known as the inventor of the moveable-type printing press, which led to the mass production of printed books and subsequent growth of literacy, knowledge and learning.

The project was first suggested by a DP volunteer. It was quickly picked up by one of our newer project managers, ably assisted by one of our more experienced and prolific project managers, who helped convert the long “s” used in the original publication to the regular “s” in use today.

With notification that PG was nearing its 50,000th book, the project manager suggested that if we hurried, perhaps we could finish it in time to be considered as a contender.

More than 30 volunteers joined in with no notice and made sure the pages were proofread and formatted to a standard of excellence, so that there was very little for the post-processor to have to do to assemble and check the pages for the final ebook. A draft was made available, and in next to no time smooth readers had read the book and reported their findings to ensure the ebook represented the original.

The book is a biography of the man, born Johann Gensfleisch, who preferred to be known as Johann Gutenberg (John Gutenberg in the translation). His inventions led to the printing of the first book published using moveable type, the Bible in Latin. He had little money and was unable to continue his experiments without financial backing. He met John Fust, who bankrolled Gutenberg’s venture, and the Bible was completed in time for the wedding of Fust’s daughter:

The Bible, on its part, had its silver clasps well rubbed and polished, and, being placed on a table, it shone, to the edification and admiration of all beholders.

The book quotes Gutenberg as saying:

My art belongs to me as much as to the rest of the world; let it remain the property of intelligence, and only be practised by those who have been initiated in it.

Yet he felt that his:

… art is not like any other art; a painter sketches his figures on the canvas, and he perfects the creation of his thought; the same with the poet, the engraver, the architect, and the musician; we, on the contrary, with our presses, are only the servants of others; printing is only an instrument for thinkers. Of what importance are the fingers which regulate the letters in a book? Of what importance is the hand which works the press, which arranges the pages and the leaves, which gives a visible form to the action of the mind?

Gutenberg toiled long and hard, working in dark, oppressive and humble conditions, but eventually he lost his business to Fust and died “neglected and in destitution.” His legacy, however, lives on, and his namesake, Project Gutenberg, continues the philosophy of sharing the printed word with the world.

This post was contributed by a DP volunteer.

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A Soldier’s Daughter

September 5, 2015

A Soldier’s Daughter, by G.A. Henty, published in 1906, covercontains three stories. Each one is set in a different continent, but they are all very adventurous. What is more, they all show the bravery of girls — an unusual way to present them at the beginning of the twentieth century, when girls were expected to act like “ladies,” and adventures were considered to be the exclusive province of men.

The first story, “A Soldier’s Daughter,” tells us about Nita, the daughter of a major in a British military camp in Darlinger, India. The following quotes give an idea of what Nita’s father expected from her:

I have quite made up my mind at last, Nita, when I return from this expedition, to pack you off to your uncle in England; you are getting a great deal too old to be knocking about in a barrack-yard, and there are no ladies here who would keep you up to the mark. I know that you are a favourite with all the officers, but that only makes matters worse. You have been a regular tomboy for the last five years, and it is quite time that you were
taught to behave as a young lady.

I like a woman who can play an accompaniment to a good old English, Scotch, or Irish song.…

… there is no more necessary accomplishment on the frontier than for a woman to be able to make her own clothes.

But Nita is a very brave girl. One day, when her father is away with most of the troops, a local tribe attacks the camp, and Nita is captured. Nita not only manages to escape, but after a long, perilous, and adventurous trip, she and an officer — whom she rescued! — finally manage to reach a British camp, where Nita’s father, who thought his daughter was dead, can hold her in his arms again. And of course Nita is proclaimed a heroine!

The second story, which is situated in Germany, is called “How Count Conrad von Waldensturm Took Goldstein.” This is about a young count, who, after a war in which his father was killed, finds out that a rival Baron from a neighbouring castle has attacked Waldensturm and kidnapped the count’s sister Minna, with the purpose of marrying her to the baron’s evil son. With the help of the people of the villages, who are as eager as Count Conrad himself to overthrow the Baron of Goldstein, he is able to free his sister, and, with tricks and an ambush, to kill Baron Goldstein and his son, and make himself master of Castle Goldstein. And all this would not have been possible without the help of Bertha Grun, the daughter of a villager, who was appointed by the baron to be Minna von Waldensturm’s lady-in-waiting.

The last story takes us to Australia, and is called “A Raid by the Blacks.” The Roberts family are living on an outlying farming station in Australia. In those days, when life on a remote farm was extremely hard, people could use all the hands that were available, for every task. But look at the differences in education Effie and her brother received:

The boy, who was now fifteen, had been for the past two years at Sydney, living at his uncle’s and attending school. In another year he was to return to the station. He had gone most reluctantly, but his father had said: “I can quite understand your liking this life, Ned, but I don’t wish you to grow up simply a bush farmer. The colony is increasing fast, and there will be plenty of openings for a young fellow of intelligence and a fair education. I hope that by the time you grow up I shall be able to settle you on a farm like mine, and stock it well for you, if you decide upon following this sort of life, or to start you in any line that you may like to adopt in Sydney. You have had two years of running wild, and if you remain here you will speedily forget what little you have learned; but in any case, three years at school will be a great advantage to you.”

Effie, the daughter, was now fourteen, a strong healthy girl who could ride any horse on the station, had been taught to use both pistol and rifle, and was as bold and fearless as a boy.

Effie had her own tasks on the farm:

Effie went out twice a day with food for the horses, and each time carried a dozen large apples in her apron, which she gave them after they had eaten their corn.

Effie still was a girl of her time, however. When she had to escape the farm in boy’s clothes to ride off and get help from the neighbours, she was a bit embarrassed:

As Effie felt shy about appearing in boy’s clothes, Mrs. Talbot lent her a blouse and skirt.

The reader should note that the stories in A Soldier’s Daughter are not “politically correct” by today’s standards, in terms of how different races are presented. But the book is a creature of its time, and in my opinion, Nita, Bertha and Effie showed that they were real heroines!

This post was contributed by DP volunteer Eevee.

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Proofing with Maps

August 8, 2015

While proofing for Distributed Proofreaders, I often find myself opening up a mapping application to locate rivers, towns, buildings, forts, streets, etc. that are mentioned, described, or central to a project.  Sometimes it’s to figure out where they are. Sometimes it’s to try and see what’s being described.

map

For example, Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, Volume XXIII, describes some rock formations that the footnote identified as being in Dawson and Valley Counties, Montana. Using that information, I was able to view a photo of the rock formations. I’ve also found remote tiny towns that still exist in the American West — one even had a preserved historical district.

Florizel’s Folly (in progress at DP) led me to Brighton, England; Yellowstone’s Living Geology: Earthquakes and Mountains (also in progress) to Old Faithful.

I posted in the DP forums about this and found another proofreader who was using mapping software to locate parks that were mentioned in old bird books as locations of certain birds. This person was interested in whether the parks have the same birds.

Of course, I look at maps because I love maps. So starting with a specific reference point from a book, I can get lost for half an hour or more exploring, envisioning, and virtually visiting. Anywhere. And how exciting when I get a chance to visit in person a site I’ve visited before via mapping software; for example, the Pony Express Statue in Sacramento Old Town.

If you haven’t tried this before, do! You may find yourself addicted.

This post was contributed by WebRover, a DP volunteer.

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Celebrating 30,000 Titles

July 7, 2015

30K banner

Distributed Proofreaders has reached another milestone: we’ve posted 30,000 unique titles to Project Gutenberg!

We’re celebrating this achievement with a collection of 30 works, the product of DP volunteers’ perseverance and hard work in making a wide range of books available online:

These titles are an excellent illustration of what DP volunteers do every day:  We preserve and make available, for the delight and enlightenment of readers everywhere, a broad array of books on many subjects and in many languages. Congratulations to all who made this achievement possible!

This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.

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The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn

July 4, 2015

Every once in a while, when my usual route home to Brooklyn from my job in Queens is clogged with traffic, I opt to take what I like to think of as the Revolutionary War Route. This route takes me past the site of a brilliant strategic move by the British that nearly cost the brand-new American nation its independence. You can learn much about that move from Henry Phelps Johnston’s fascinating account, The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn, published in 1878.

map The campaign actually began months before the American Continental Congress issued its Declaration of Independence (the first e-book, by the way, that Project Gutenberg ever posted). Johnston relates how in January 1776, George Washington, rightly suspecting that the British would try to occupy New York City, obtained the Continental Congress’s approval to raise the city’s defenses. By August 1776, enough forts, batteries, barricades, and redoubts had been constructed so that the Americans “had inclosed themselves on the Brooklyn peninsula.”

The Americans, however, hadn’t reckoned on one key weakness in their position. Between them and the British lay a long, thickly wooded ridge, the product of glaciers receding thousands of years before. Today, this ridge is filled with parks and cemeteries, and along it runs the parkway I sometimes take to get home. Back in 1776, it was a wilderness. The Americans believed that they had all the important passes through this ridge under control.

But there was another pass that they had left essentially unguarded: the Jamaica Pass. Four miles to the east of the American lines, it was too isolated to keep covered effectively. Just a handful of officers were assigned to patrol it, for the Americans confidently believed that the British would be approaching from a different direction.

As Johnston puts it,

But little did the Americans suspect that at the very moment their defence seemed well arranged and their outguards vigilant they were already in the web which the enemy had been silently weaving around them during the night. That flanking column!… [W]ith crushing weight was it now to fall upon our outpost guards, who felt themselves secure along the hills and in the woods.

British troops poured through the pass, and the Americans were outflanked. They lost the Battle of Long Island, and eventually lost control of New York to the British. The war, fought on many fronts throughout the colonies, would not end until 1783.

The depth of Johnston’s scholarship is evident, but his writing is so clear that the reader never feels mired in detail. There are helpful maps, and a special bonus in Part II of the book: dozens of documents from the campaign that not only illustrate the strategies and concerns of the American generals, but also give a fascinating glimpse into everyday military life in the 18th Century. Johnston’s book is an outstanding contribution to American history.

Today is the 239th anniversary of American independence.

This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.

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The Librarian at Play

June 3, 2015
Lee Library

The Carnegie library in Lee, Massachusetts, c. 1909.

In the small New England town where my husband and I spend our vacations, the jewel of Main Street is a lovely public library built in 1907 from local marble. It’s a “Carnegie library” – one of the 2,500 libraries established worldwide with grants from steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

A fictional version of one of those small-town Carnegie libraries is the setting for most of the pieces in The Librarian at Play by Edmund Lester Pearson, a delightfully humorous volume recounting, among other things, the daily interactions of the librarians with the quirky patrons of the library.

Pearson was a librarian and author, now best known for his fascinating true crime books, such as Studies in Murder, which are now classics of the genre. Educated at Harvard and the New York State Library School, he began his library career in Washington, D.C., and worked for a time at the Library of Congress. Beginning in 1906, he wrote a column, “The Librarian,” for a Boston newspaper, and it was this column that provided the amusing pieces in The Librarian at Play. The book was published in 1911, after he had moved back to his home town of Newburyport, Massachusetts – which, ironically, didn’t need a Carnegie library, because it had had a library of its own since 1854, and Pearson served on its Board of Trustees.

coverThe pieces in The Librarian at Play poke good-natured fun at books, readers, modern fictional characters, and even inventions. One piece features a salesman trying to sell the library an “interest gauge” that one attaches to a book to determine how interesting it is (the Letters of Junius doesn’t do too well, but a Conan Doyle story shoots the gauge up to a high level). Another piece concerns the exciting installation of a telephone at the library, which enables patrons to call for help in identifying a bird on the front lawn, or to get the answer to a newspaper contest question, or to locate a novel of which they know only the barest outlines of the plot, but not the title or author (“You see, it starts this way….”)

Even Andrew Carnegie is a source of playful humor. One fellow strongly suspects that the library doesn’t carry a particular socialist newspaper “because it’s Carnegie’s library, ain’t it, miss?” When the librarian replies that Carnegie merely donated the money for the building, the man insists that “he runs it, just the same” by using “people in his pay.” In another piece, an equally jaded gentleman opines that an overdue book notice demanding a fine is “just one of Carnegie’s games to get money out of yer.”

The Librarian at Play may be little known compared to Pearson’s true crime books, but it is a bright little gem in his body of work. Many thanks to the Distributed Proofreaders team for bringing it to the Project Gutenberg library.

This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.

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Sunday School Stories

April 4, 2015

Maybee’s Stepping Stones by Archie Fell is a book of Sunday school stories for each week of the year. As I read it, I experienced a wide range of emotions — love, kindness, patience, life, death, naughtiness, guilt, fear, consequences, tolerance, forgiveness, family, community, happiness, sorrow, adversity, hope, loneliness, sadness, joy….

frontispiece

I gasped with alarm when Dick shot himself; when Tryphosa was overcome with the fire. I wanted to cry when Dick lay in the woods unheard, when Phosy and Aunty McFane became ill, and I rejoiced when Mrs. Harte and Bill Finnegan went to the Sabbath School, and when Dan Harte resolved to overcome his addiction to alcohol. I shared the children’s frustrations as they struggled with doing the right thing, and smiled unashamedly when their good deeds worked near miracles.

The stories may be old-fashioned, and based on Christianity, but the lessons are for us all, whether we believe in a god or not, whether our deeds are in person or via social media, whether we are young or old. We can all put out a hand in comfort and together we can grow in strength no matter what our trials and tribulations.

She had just been reading a chapter in the Bible out loud, and Aunty McFane said there was a promise for every ache she had. Isn’t it funny,” he  continued, turning to Miss Marvin, “that folks just as different as can be find exactly what they want in the Bible? — Maybee’s Stepping Stones, page 224.

Reading these stories, I couldn’t help but reminisce about when I was a little girl going to Sunday school.

Denomination meant nothing to us so the church we attended was the one within walking distance — I think it was Presbyterian. Our parents didn’t seem particularly religious, but they did make us go to Sunday school. Our father had in mind that if we weren’t christened it would be easier for us if we wanted to marry someone of strong faith in a particular church.

I never did work out my father’s beliefs. I suspect my mother was quite devout, although I did not know her to go to church, and she didn’t speak about religion much. She did go to a Catholic primary school — she had me shocked and in fits of laughter when she told me of the time she had to stand in front of an open fire with a piece of soap in her mouth because she had sworn at the nuns.

…  then she tried scrubbing the inside of his mouth with soap-suds — Maybee’s Stepping Stones, page 19.

My sister only recently told me the story of her second son who, at age six, when admonished for swearing, was threatened with a similar fate of having his mouth washed out with soap. The little boy went to the bathroom, grabbed some soap, foamed it up in his mouth, and went out to his mother and said, “Now I can swear.” I think there’s quite a bit of my mother’s determined spirit in both my sister and my nephew. The same son said to my sister the other week: “Do what you want, mother, you will anyway.”

My mother also told the story of a family member who was a Major in the Salvation Army. I heard her say many times that only the good die young. And I learnt that she had a very difficult time accepting the death of a daughter before I was born.

Upon the pine coffin, the girls in Miss Cox’s class laid a wreath of beautiful hot-house flowers; but all over the lid, and inside, around the pale face and over the white robe, were fresh, fragrant pond-lilies, their subtile perfume filling the room. — Maybee’s Stepping Stones, page 149.

We had Sunday School stories, much like those told in Maybee’s Stepping Stones. We collected a stamp for each story lesson we attended. When our stamp sheet was full, we were presented with a little book.

We had our “Sunday best” clothes, and how we did love dressing up, putting on our delicate little dresses with ribbons and bows, and polishing our little shoes. Going to Sunday school was exciting and something to look forward to. It added a purpose to our lives, spiritual and social.

But she made her appearance, bright and early, Sabbath morning, comparatively quite docile, submitted to be washed, shampooed, braided, and ruffled, with a most martyr-like air, and came out from the process not so very unlike the five other girls, among whom Say seated her, with such a happy look in her own blue eyes. Just to see her sitting there more than repaid the trouble. — Maybee’s Stepping Stones, page 106.

Our Sunday school was at the back of the church in a prefabricated corrugated steel “Nissen hut” like those used for temporary accommodation during the war years. The building is still there but it is no longer a church, and the hut has been replaced by a brick addition attached to the main building.

I mentioned above it was within walking distance. Back then, there was a church nearby almost everywhere. I thought about this in recent years when a neighbour who had become almost housebound because of poor vision and declining mobility told me that one of the things she missed most was being able to walk to church. Her old church building was still there, too, at the end of the street where she had lived most of her adult life, along with the convent buildings that had been converted first to a school, and then to an art gallery, and now left to crumble. The nearest church for her was now on the other side of town. Buses don’t run on Sundays in this small community so, with few friends or family interested in taking her to church, she had only television services to comfort her.

So much inward soul searching from a little children’s book — literary merit?… Well, the stories stand up to the test of time, is all I can conclude.

This post was contributed by a DP volunteer.

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Opera Buff

February 7, 2015

Not everyone likes opera, but when someone loves opera, it’s a deep and passionate and unending love. There’s something utterly beguiling about the marriage of music and drama that makes some people downright demented about it. I know whereof I speak; I’ve been working with a small opera company since I was 11 years old, for nearly 44 years now, and I’m familiar with every form of opera dementia—my own and that of countless others. For the love of opera, people will stand in long lines in the rain, sit in uncomfortable seats for hours, travel long distances, spend years studying it, singing it, working at it, talking about it, writing about it.

It might be an exaggeration to say that Gustav Kobbé (1857-1918) was demented about opera, but the sheer scale of his masterpiece, The Complete Opera Book, proves that it was no ordinary labor of love.

Kobbé trained as a pianist, and took a detour to law school, but ultimately made his career as a music and drama critic for the leading newspapers and magazines of the day. In that capacity, he attended opera performances all over the world, including the 1882 premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal at Bayreuth, Germany. He put his decades of opera experience into The Complete Opera Book, published posthumously in 1919.

The book is truly a tour-de-force, covering over 200 operas in over 800 pages. Kobbé provides information about each opera’s premiere and important performances, with the leading singers’ names; a complete character list with voice types; anecdotes about the opera’s composition and early performances; analysis and criticism; a synopsis of the plot; and, as the title page boasts, “400 of the Leading Airs and Motives in Musical Notation.” The first edition also contains “One Hundred Portraits in Costume and Scenes from Opera”—fascinating historic photographs of the leading singers of the day, in character.

Caruso

Enrico Caruso as Canio in I Pagliacci

Alas, Kobbé didn’t live to see his masterpiece in print. In the summer of 1918, he was indulging in his other love, sailing off the coast of Long Island in New York, when he was killed by a low-flying hydroplane. According to the New York Times account, he saw the plane coming, and had just stood up to dive to safety when the plane’s bottom boards hit him in the head.

Luckily, he had nearly completed The Complete Opera Book, and it was decided to bring it to publication soon after his death, with fellow music critic Katharine Wright editing the work and adding some operas to it. But the apparent rush to publication unfortunately left numerous errors in the first edition. Still, Kobbé’s labor of love was deservedly hailed as a “notable addition to musical literature” (Oakland Tribune, Jan. 4, 1920).

The Complete Opera Book has remained an important opera reference work since. It was revised and updated a number of times, most famously by George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, whose best-known edition, The Definitive Kobbé’s Opera Book (1987) contains over 300 operas and is now considered a classic, though it lacks the historic photographs and some of Kobbé’s original commentary. The most recent edition, The New Kobbé’s Opera Book (1997), added some 200 additional operas, but disappointingly omits much of the detailed information and music notation contained in earlier editions, presumably to make room for those additional operas.

To my opera-demented mind, the later editions, while useful, somehow lack the charm of the original, with its frank enthusiasm (“Wagner’s genius was so supreme that, although he has been dead thirty-four years, he is still without a successor”) and its wealth of illustrations. The Distributed Proofreaders team has brought the original to life again, complete with photographs, and music that you can actually hear. Who knows, it may make an opera buff out of you.

This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.

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Histoire de France: Our 29,000th Title

January 14, 2015

PGDP - 29.000th Unique Title

Distributed Proofreaders is celebrating another milestone — our 29,000th title posted to Project Gutenberg — with another very special project: the completion of all 19 volumes of Jules Michelet’s Histoire de France.

Michelet labored for over 30 years on his masterpiece, at first aided by his job in the French government’s Record Office, which gave him access to a vast array of primary sources. Due to his ardent republican sentiments, he lost his job after the 1848 Revolution, but continued the work on his great Histoire, taking time out now and then to produce a number of works on subjects as varied as natural history, religion, and even witchcraft. Project Gutenberg has a good collection of Michelet’s works in different languages.

The Histoire, completed in 1867, covers the full sweep of French history from ancient times to the French Revolution. Michelet devoted several volumes to the Renaissance, a term that he is said to have coined to describe the flowering of European culture after the strictures of the Middle Ages. He brought to his work not only meticulous scholarship, but also a unique personal style, almost poetic in its romanticism, and a deep interest, revolutionary for its time, in the people of France, not just their kings and governments.

Congratulations to the many DP volunteers who brought this great project to fruition!

This post was contributed by Linda Cantoni, a Distributed Proofreaders volunteer.

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