[caleb72]

When I first got into eReading, I was very excited to learn about public domain works being downloadable for free. I started thinking of all the classics I'd never read that I could now get stuck into without an investment.

Anyway - the Gutenberg library was nice and the MobileRead library was even better. However, not that long ago I came across the Delphi Classics website. It looked like an organisation had decided to make a business out of repackaging the classics painstakingly proofing OCR scans etc.. to give a professional output at a very modest price.

Then I started to see several comments on the high quality of the Delphi Classics works which made me think that the token investment given was worth it for the peace of mind.

Anyway - to get to the point, I purchased the complete works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, an author I'm very interested in, and I started reading one of his smaller works, The Eternal Husband. This is what I've found in the first chapter:

so at least the lawyer declared, and begged him for mercy’s sake to go away to the country somewhere.
. But he could not make up his mind to do so.

Stray period.

At first sight you might have supposed him to be of a lax, care-tess disposition or character

care-tess?

“‘higher things” as matters which he’

Quote mishaps.

how once, and not so very long ago, he had been publicly insulted, and had not challenged the offender how once an epigram had been fastened to his name by some witty person

There's a missing semi-colon between "offender" and "how".

he remembered several un, paid debts, and how he had most stupidly run through two. very respectable fortunes.

Problems with "unpaid" and an unwanted period between "two" and "very".

Then he began to recall facts belonging to a “ higher” order.

Redundant space after the double-quote.

There were moments (few albeit) in which he was not even ashamed of having no carriage of his own, now; orx of being seen by one of his former friends in shabby clothes;

orx?

But though no other opportunity ever did occur of maligning the schoolmistress, yet the very thought alone that “such an opportunity were to occur he would inevitably seize it was almost fatal to him at times.

Double-quote is out of place. Should be the word "if".

he resumed, in a strain of melancholy philosophizing \

Strange \ instead of ;

what with the dust and the heat, and the discomfor-of this house

and the discomfort of this house

I worit go away

won't

I’ll stay and die here rather than go?

Should be ! instead of ?


This is what I found in the first 17 paragraphs!

I will of course be reporting these problems. However, has anyone had an experience like this with the Delphi Classics? Are some works better than others? Surely the good reputation they have must come from somewhere. In this case, from a superficial glance, they would have been much better off copying and pasting from the Gutenberg site as none of these errors exist in the version on that site.