e-Book Requests and Begging

[BookCat]

Thanks for the UK link, I've bookmarked it. I found copies of "Something Fresh" for 64p + £2.99 postage! I might stick to the charity shops, where pbacks are usually 50p.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I didn't think Abebooks was allow to sell used eBooks.

Jon:

Unless you're being ironic about the use of the phrase real book form, have another look at Arucaria's comment:

Originally Posted by Arucaria

Abebooks.com has several secondhand copies of Something Fresh in real book form at very reasonable prices (considerably less than Amazon).

You could of course be asserting that ebooks are "real books," too, but Arucaria's comment is only meant to be practical, isn't it?

Arucaria:

For many of us, the problem with physical books is that we lack the space for any more, which is why we emphasize the electronic kind. (Besides, ebooks are a damned sight greener than the paper variety.)

Hence the begging on this thread.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Jon:

Unless you're being ironic about the use of the phrase real book form, have another look at Arucaria's comment:



You could of course be asserting that ebooks are "real books," too, but Arucaria's comment is only meant to be practical, isn't it?

Arucaria:

For many of us, the problem with physical books is that we lack the space for any more, which is why we emphasize the electronic kind. (Besides, ebooks are a damned sight greener than the paper variety.)

Hence the begging on this thread.

an eBook is a real book. I was just hoping that the message got through. Obviously not.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

an eBook is a real book. I was just hoping that the message got through. Obviously not.

I think your message might well have gotten through (though you seemed less clear in expressing it than usual, which is understandable -- this is only an internet forum): No one has brought up places to buy paper books since that post.

[Araucaria]

To me the main point is that, with the exception of a few of P G Wodehouse's books published before 1923, all the rest won't be in the public domain anywhere until 2025 (life plus 50) or 2045 (life plus 70), as Wodehouse lived until 1975.

So if you want a free copy of one, basically you shoudn't be asking here: and if you want to read his books cheaply you'll have to buy a physical book secondhand.

And yes, I too have trouble with finding space for all the real books that I have on my shelves.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Araucaria

To me the main point is that, with the exception of a few of P G Wodehouse's books published before 1923, all the rest won't be in the public domain anywhere until 2025 (life plus 50) or 2045 (life plus 70), as Wodehouse lived until 1975.

2026/2046, in fact. A work enters the public domain at the start of the year AFTER the 50th/70th anniversary of the death of the author.

[Araucaria]

Originally Posted by HarryT

2026/2046, in fact. A work enters the public domain at the start of the year AFTER the 50th/70th anniversary of the death of the author.

Thanks Harry - I'll mark it on my calendar.

[BookCat]

Sorry, I had no intention of creating a furore. I believed that Wodehouse's books were pd already, but accept that I was mistaken. Calm down folks, it's okay.

[Araucaria]

Eric Gill died in 1940 so his books are out of copyright in quite a lot of countries.

His An Essay on Typography is well worth reading, but it really needs to be seen in the way he both wrote and designed it. It is set in a typeface, Joanna, whuich he designed himself and which was first used in this book. The book is (inter a great deal of alia) about typography and the design of written/inscribed/printed letters more generally.

You can see selections from it, as published, here. In addition to the typeface and the way the book is presented, it also contains a substantial number of illustrations.

It's rather a large PDF (my copy is a bit more than 6.5 MB) but I think it ought to be readily available somewhere, even if only as a PDF.

The book is something of a manifesto, and something of a rant against industrialisation. Even for the non-typographer it has much that is interesting: and besides making very frequent use of the ampersand, it probably has the largest pilcrow-to-word ratio of any printed book.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to make it more widely available without emasculating it?

[HarryT]

Given the subject matter, it's probably the sort of thing that can only be meaningfully distributed as a PDF.

[Araucaria]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Given the subject matter, it's probably the sort of thing that can only be meaningfully distributed as a PDF.

Yes, Harry, I think you are right, but it isn't easy to find as a PDF. Is there any place for it here?

[HarryT]

If you are certain that the version you have genuinely is all Mr Gill's work, and does not contain any later introductions, or other editorial material, you could load it to the appropriate section of our eBook library here at MR.

[Araucaria]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you are certain that the version you have genuinely is all Mr Gill's work, and does not contain any later introductions, or other editorial material, you could load it to the appropriate section of our eBook library here at MR.

No, dammit, there's a modern introduction. And I believe copies of the original editions sell for fancy prices. It'll have to wait until I can find a scanned version of the 1930s originals.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Araucaria

No, dammit, there's a modern introduction. And I believe copies of the original editions sell for fancy prices. It'll have to wait until I can find a scanned version of the 1930s originals.

You could just delete the pages of introduction. The rest would be OK. But in the copy I found it was a pretty poor quality and low-res scan.

[Araucaria]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

You could just delete the pages of introduction. The rest would be OK. But in the copy I found it was a pretty poor quality and low-res scan.

I've just posted it as a fairly large PDF in the "Other Books" section - pretty much as it was published in 1936, but with a cover reconstructed from the 1931 first edition. It contains no material but Gill's original text, so hopefully it is properly in the public domain.

It is, I think, a reasonably good scan too.

The only way in which it fails to reproduce Gill's original is that he clearly designed the book so that (in parts, anyway) facing pages needed to be seen simultaneously: an example is his re-working of a John Bull poster with the words "A DEMON who lives on the DEAD". But that's a minor issue.