Other Fiction Joyce, James: Ulysses v.2 Jan 2011

[ldolse]

Ulysses has previously been posted by Sein at this thread.

Gutenberg's html was used as the source for this version. This version has been improved over the Gutenberg/original mobileread post in that it contains a hierarchical TOC that lists out the three parts and eighteen episodes. The epub is split at each episode point - I've seen Ulysses frequently used as example of books that are difficult for ebook readers as there are no obvious split points - I thought the episodes were suitable for the purpose, especially considering the book was originally released episodically.

The names of the episodes are only reflected in the TOC, not in the actual text, to stay true to the original formatting.

Minor formatting improvements are also included like removing indents at the beginning of episodes and after verse, avoiding page breaks before lines of verse, etc.

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[lyric]

Wonderful work. I have been looking for a properly formatted Ulysses for an age. Thank you very much!

[FlorenceArt]

Arrrghh! Ulysses is the most frustrating e-book I've ever read. I bought two editions, one in paper and one ePub from Penguin, and downloaded all the free digital versions I could find, and none is error free. Still, the MR one is the most readable one and that's the one I'm reading now. I guess a book like that is really hard to proof-read...

(And by the way, don't bother to buy the Penguin ePub, the formatting is very nice but the number of OCR errors much too high).

[ldolse]

Yeah - I didn't attempt to proofread the Gutenberg version - after reading Wikipedia about all the controversies on screwed up revisions and failed attempts at a 'perfect' copy of Ulysses I decided it might be best not to throw my hat into that ring. I'll leave it to the academics.

Gutenberg is based off the original printing (the only variant out of copyright), not sure how accurate the proofreading of the OCR conversion is, but according to Wikipedia the original edition contains several thousand errors, yet is still considered by some to be more accurate than later editions.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by ldolse

Yeah - I didn't attempt to proofread the Gutenberg version - after reading Wikipedia about all the controversies on screwed up revisions and failed attempts at a 'perfect' copy of Ulysses I decided it might be best not to throw my hat into that ring. I'll leave it to the academics.

Gutenberg is based off the original printing (the only variant out of copyright), not sure how accurate the proofreading of the OCR conversion is, but according to Wikipedia the original edition contains several thousand errors, yet is still considered by some to be more accurate than later editions.

I don't believe that the Gutenberg version is based on the original 1921 edition printed by Librairie Shakespeare in Paris, because the paper version I bought is supposed to be that, and has end notes to correct the typesetting errors. The MR version I am reading has corrected at least some of these errors (I didn't check them all of course). What I am talking about are simple and very avoidable OCR errors such as "Ill" becoming "111". Which is at least readable, contrary to the paying Penguin version where "the" is sometimes replaced with "die", and believe me it's really hard to make sense of a sentence when that happens

Also, James Joyce died in 1941, so all his books are in the public domain in countries where copyright is life+50, and will be in the public domain very soon in life+70 countries (or is it already? I don't know if it starts in 2011 or 2012). But I know it's different in the U.S.

[lyric]

Joyce's books come out of copyright in UK and Ireland on January 1st 2012. It would be a fitting celebration if a definitive public domain version existed by that time.

Joyce's grandson (who holds the copyright) has been a bit of an idiot over the years, preventing public readings, new editions etc.

[ldolse]

I'm more or less going off of the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)

They mention that the 1922 first edition (same as 1921?) for some reason is out of copyright already (before the life+70 date), while 'some' of the other editions may go out of copyright in 2012. Apparently because the first edition was so screwed up, many of the subsequent editions which were 'edited' (possibly including the one with your end-notes), are copy-rightable as separate editions, and the scholars/publishing houses who made those editions retain the copyrights on those versions until who knows when...

Agree with lyric that it would be nice to get a definitive corrected edition - who knows, maybe some grad student will find it a fitting project and release it to the OSS community.

The Wikipedia article goes into further detail, but that's why I assumed Gutenberg was using the first edition.

There's also Gutenberg's own site, which says it's the pre-1923 print edition:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4300 - click the bibrec tab.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by ldolse

I'm more or less going off of the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel)

They mention that the 1922 first edition (same as 1921?) for some reason is out of copyright already (before the life+70 date), while 'some' of the other editions may go out of copyright in 2012. Apparently because the first edition was so screwed up, all the subsequent editions which were 'edited' (possibly including the one with your end-notes), are copy-rightable as separate editions, and the scholars/publishing houses who made those editions retain the copyrights on those versions until who knows when...

Agree with lyric that it would be nice to get a definitive corrected edition - who knows, maybe some grad student will find it a fitting project and release it to the OSS community.

The Wikipedia article goes into further detail, but that's why I assumed Gutenberg was using the first edition.

There's also Gutenberg's own site, which says it's the pre-1923 print edition:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4300 - click the bibrec tab.

It does seem complicated... 1922 is probably the correct date of the first edition if you checked it, I cited the date from memory and my memory of numbers is extremely unreliable

[januaryman]

As for other versions - I have the Mobile Reference copy "Works of James Joyce" that includes Ulysses, but since it did such a shameful job on Dubliners in that same volume, I dare not risk reading Ulysses with any faith in its correctness. So I'll try yours, and thank you for your work.

[AprilHare]

Now out of copyright in the European Union - Irishmen, rejoyce!

[ricketytickety]

Thank you, Idolse, for the new version with distinct episodes. But I seem to have lost these divisions in converting from epub to mobi for my Kindle machine. Any suggestions?