"I have been making Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) stories available on my
website, and have completed proof-reading her novels.  At one point, you
had an interest in making them available on Project Gutenberg.  I am still
amenable to the thought."

http://home.comcast.net/~jkaylin/jeff/Book/Book.htm

Although it may take quite a while before I am able to
get around to it...

Anyone else interested in this?

I went and looked at it. I find it extremely interesting, though like you, I don't know when I could get to it.

 

As to the rest of the thread, concerning Cervantes and so forth, I'll probably bring down the wrath of the mailing list on my head, but may I point out that we specifically say that we do not depend on a single edition or whatever. In reality, where a lot of scholarly interest is likely, we DO have to depend on a single edition, although the MLA rules on documentation of Web sources make it unnecessary to retain page numbers from the specific edition. (Am I the only one who keeps track of changes in MLA documentation requirements?) What drives me to wanting to spit and bite is that our front matter usually fails to tell us when the book was written and/or published. I go to the LoC, and if I don't find it there I scream and bang my head against the wall for a while. (Not really. But I feel like it. Several times I really have cried from sheer frustration after looking in a few more places.)

 

But as far as proofing goes, unless there is scholarly interest, just proofing so that the text makes sense should be adequate, as long as the proofreader is conscious of grammar, mechanics, and the changes that time and geography bring to correctness. In other words, I flatter myself that as I am a good writer and a good grammarian, and I have read and enjoyed texts from the last 600 years of writing in the English language, my version is re-edited rather than proofread, and should therefore be acceptable for all purposes other than scholarly interest. (I am aware that this paragraph does not make much sense. I am ill today and would neither write nor proofread anything for publication.)

 

When I proofed MADAME DUBARRY I was aware that there might be scholarly interest, and therefore I followed the text exactly except for page numbers, inserting text notes where they might be needed for clarity. I already knew that the MLA does not need page number documentation when a person is quoting from a Web source, and I don't know enough about any other documentation system to know what it needs. But when I created the PG version of SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON I used five different public domain translations, and my own brain, to create the best reading text I could make. Someone asked me, in effect, why I had not created a variorum. I didn't create a variorum because (a) I was creating a reading text, not a scholarly text; and (b) because I have not the mental, physical, or financial resources to create a variorum, particularly considering that the book's length was tripled by its first translator into French; and (c) because I didn't think the variorum would be worth doing anyway. (This does not mean I disapprove of variorum editions. I was fortunate enough to have repeatedly read variorum editions of Emily Dickinson and the Rubiyat in late childhood, with the result that I often memorized the "wrong" version of a poem.) But we must decide, for any book, what we are creating, a scholarly edition or a reading edition? I am aware that a good many useful people prefer scholarly editions, and have scanned and proofed them. I too am a scholar. But I consider reading editions very useful, and far more important for me to do, because as a writer of popular fiction I grok the needs of the genre. None of us would be likely to have reached the status of scholar without first having read a whole lot of reading editions.

 

In fact there IS some scholarly interest in Mary E. Wilkins, so we would have to do one of two things: (1) Either re-proof everything according to the text, which is probably not even possible without spending several years on it; or (2) re-edit it and post in the front matter a warning that this is a reading edition ONLY.

 

Now I will pull in my soap box and go away.

 

Anne