Quote:
Originally Posted by Psymon
Well, you are familiar with the Princeton editions of Thoreau's writings, I suppose? Those are THE authoritative editions of all his works, the closest thing we'll ever get to what he really intended to have published -- and not, in fact, what was published, full of various errors, and things that he later corrected/emended himself. One might say that the Princeton editions are a "bastardization" of the first edition, but if anything it's actually the other way around -- that most of the first printings of his works were bastardizations (done by either the editor or printer) of what he'd intended to publish.
Nevertheless, although I wish I could just take Princeton's versions and publish those, that would be a violation of their intellectual property rights, of course, and so in a way, you're getting both what you asked for, as well as what you didn't want: you're getting what was first printed (in some, but not all, cases within Thoreau's lifetime), which in many places is indeed a bastardization of what he actually wrote and wanted.
I guess you might say that this is a case of "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it!"  |
Thank you for the "Thoreau editions report".
Yes, the situation with his texts is tricky, and he's not the only writer with such issues. My no. 1 favorite writer (and Thoreau admirer) Leo Tolstoy was censored all life long by
Czarist censors, and soon after he died, his works started to get censored by
Communist censors for another 7 decades. We've been pretty much re-discovering Tolstoy's writings in their true flavor over the last two decades. (The oft-quoted, Russian "academic" 90-volume "Polnoye" edition of Tolstoy's works, that it took over 30 years to publish, is
not reliable – it's the textbook example of how classic writers should
not be re-released.)
That's why I said "ideally under the writer's personal auspices".
The important thing is for the e-publisher always to strive to remain as close as possible to what the original writer actually published or (more tricky:
) may have
intended to publish. But editorial policies such as modernizing spellings, or modifying the original punctuation to suit today's readers' tastes (let alone even more visible original text modifications) are an anathema to me. Only that honorable German
wort- und zeichengetreu publishing principle is good enough for me when creating EPUB editions of classic writers' works.
I'm not saying modernized editions shouldn't have the right to exist – they're OK, as long as they're
clearly labeled as such; the trouble is, they typically are
not labeled in any way, and are marketed and sold under the guise of the original work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by odedta
@Faterson: Gitden is rather good, Astri-Bee is a chinese app and people say Moon Reader, I personally dislike Moon Reader.
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Thank you for the recommendations; I'll check them out. Moon+ Reader already ("heuristically") pops up footnotes even in EPUB 2 books (!), so there's a (modest) start.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaleDe
the KF8 platform is actually an EPub 3 look alike similar to the iBooks app. Of course it is wrapped in a mobi skin.
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But that would (I understand) entail throwing the users of the first 3 Kindle device generations overboard, which I'm not ready to do at this point. I possess a Kindle 3 myself (although I gave it away to a family member), and it's still a perfectly capable e-reader in 2014. Excluding owners of only 4-year-old e-reader devices from the target audience is not something I'm ready to do, unless explicitly prompted to do so by the client. Why, I still use iPad 1, purchased in the summer of 2010, on an everyday basis (for secondary purposes) – I'd be upset if someone told me I'd be unable to open certain e-books on that device.