greg said:

There ARE master scans available for a number of eBooks.

not for "classics" that were posted early and are downloaded often.

I'm going to visit B&N today to see whether they might have a suitable dead trees edition for this purpose.

it'd be a _very_ bad idea to use such a version as a "master". the good part about that idea is that a modern printing will give very clean o.c.r. if that o.c.r. was then proofed against a _worthy_ scan-set -- one that was published "back then" -- it _might_ (emphasis on "might") save a bunch of proofing... (depending on the source used by the current-day publisher). it's worth an experiment, but i would be very sensitive to whether it was actually working well, and quit if it wasn't. -bowerbird