Vintage (e)book appearance -- Your preference?

[pynch]

Originally Posted by grannyGrumpy

I haven't any specific book in mind for an "antique vintage" project, does anybody have a request?

Shakespeare’s First Folio?

[GrannyGrump]

Ummm. I'm sorry, I will have to pass on that. I'm only able to read modern English, skimpy education. It would be interesting to simply do the styling after someone else did all the proofing and corrections, if a good pdf scan is available for reference.

I think you would do an excellent job on that one yourself. Your projects are impressive!

[pynch]

That ball is bouncing all over the place, let’s wait and see if it ends up in my court ...

I was just kidding, and don’t understand much of that English myself, but I would assume that there must be proofread versions around. All those Shakespeare scholars need something to do, don’t they?

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by grannyGrumpy

I haven't any specific book in mind for an "antique vintage" project, does anybody have a request? [yes, I plan to make an alternate "clean" version as well. ]

One book that might be appropriate for you (with your interest in wit and odd turns of phrase) might be the two volumes which comprise the Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia, by Charles Lamb. You wouldn't have to sift through conflicting editions, and the spelling and punctuation wouldn't be inconsistent, but you would find yourself rendering hoary punctuation practices, an odd vocabulary even for a Lake poet, quirky sentence structure and (if you liked) stained and timeworn pages.

Personally, I'd love to see a vintage edition of this version, which I myself own:

Note that that edition also contains illustrations (which I know you like to include).

Sample language from "A Chapter on Ears" (substitute an em dash for each double hyphen):

I have no ear.--

Mistake me not, reader--nor imagine that I am by nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne me. I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously provided with those conduits; and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets--those indispensable side-intelligencers.

Of particular interest is Lamb's essay on "The Races of Men," which he delineates as the Men Who Lend and the Men Who Borrow, concluding immediately that the Men Who Lend are tentative, furtive and apologetic, while The Men Who Borrow comprise "The Great Race."

You might also be interested in looking at (if not creating an edition of) The Autobiography of Benjamin Robert Haydon, the most famous chapter of which concerns an "Immortal Dinner" at which the attendees were Keats, Wordsworth, Lamb and -- for some unfathomable reason -- a vacuous postmaster who persisted in asking Wordsworth questions like, "Don’t you think Newton a great genius?" until a drunken Lamb staggered over to him with a candle and inquired, "Sir, will you allow me to look at your phrenological development?"

Both Haydon and Lamb date from the romantic period and are quite famous, so I believe you'd have your pick of sources.

Other English Romantics I'd love to see in the MR library: John Clare, George Darley, Walter Savage Landor, Thomas De Quincey and Dorothy Wordsworth (whose journals I prefer infinitely to the poems they inspired by her brother William).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

#4

I never change the font of the books I read. To me, a font is a font is a font. When I turn my K4 on, I read. I never use the dictionaries, never take notes, never underline or highlight passages, etc. Those features are wasted on me.

This.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Granny:

Another project you might consider: Any novel by Thomas Love Peacock -- Nightmare Abbey or Crotchet Castle might be a good place to start. Either novel would appeal to both literary types who like Gothic satires and readers who simply enjoy amusing works of fiction.

[retiredbiker]

I like the idea of old fashioned but clean. Partly I remember the thrill of getting a brand new book for Christmas as a kid, and also I'm old enough to need clean, big print to read at all. (I have a couple of .pdf (yuk) books like this that look like this and are cool on the PC screen, but of course don't work in my reader.)

[Prestidigitweeze]

Sample characters from Nightmare Abbey (as delineated by Wikipedia's article writer while wearing her question-mark-shaped mask):

Mr Christopher Glowry, Esquire: The master of Nightmare Abbey is a gentleman of an atrabilarious temperament. He lives with his only son Scythrop in his semi-dilapidated family mansion, Nightmare Abbey. Mr Glowry regularly suffers from depression and melancholy and cannot abide seeing other people look cheerful. He surrounds himself with servants whose only qualifications are long faces and dismal names such as Raven, Graves or Deathshead. His house is open to only to friends and acquaintances who share his gloomy outlook on life.

Scythrop Glowry: Mr Glowry's only son. Scythrop's forename was that of an ancestor of Mr Glowry's who hanged himself. It is generally accepted that Scythrop is a humorous portrait of Peacock's friend the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. His name is actually derived from the Greek skythrōpos (σκυθρωπος), "of sad or gloomy countenance" [because he's the son of Christopher Glowry, for the love of Magpie Von Arsenic!], . . . but almost everything else about him confirms this identification. Like Shelley, Scythrop is devoted to social regeneration. . . [n]or is Scythrop conventionally monogamous. . . . (It has also not escaped the notice of some critics that in both of Shelley's gothic novels Zastrozzi and St Irvyne, the hero is loved by two women at the same time.) Scythrop's impenetrable treatise on social regeneration, Philosophical Gas; or, a Project for a General Illumination of the Human Mind, pokes fun at Shelley's pamphleteering, his ambitions to reform society and his long-held desire to create a utopian society of kindred spirits.

Scythrop, by the way, is in love with two women (as was Shelley, though the latter's attentions were at least consecutive). One of the women is named Marionetta.

Also ultra-fun: Peacock's satirical essay, The Four Ages of Poetry, which was written to troll his friend, P. B. Shelley, who wrote a famous (but entirely too serious) reply.

Now when we consider that it is not the thinking and studious, and scientific and philosophical part of the community, not to those whose minds are bent on the pursuit and promotion of permanently useful ends and aims, that poets must address their minstrelry, but to that much larger portion of the reading public, whose minds are not awakened to the desire of valuable knowledge, and who are indifferent to any thing beyond being charmed, moved, excited, affected, and exalted: charmed by harmony, moved by sentiment, excited by passion, affected by pathos, and exalted by sublimity: harmony, which is language on the rack of Procrustes; sentiment, which is canting egotism in the mask of refined feeling; passion, which is the commotion of a weak and selfish mind; pathos, which is the whining of an unmanly spirit; and sublimity, which is the inflation of an empty head. . . .

[pynch]

Thomas Love Peacock sure has a good PR guy ...

[steven522]

As long as the chapters are divided nicely, the small breaks between parts within chapters are clearly defined, and any italicized words are kept that way I really don't care about the page background and the font face. If I can, I will strip the fonts from any ebooks just to keep the size down. I also can't stand large images embedded within an ebook that are just a fancy way of putting "Chapter 1" at the top of the page.

So I voted: Don't care, I'll change it anyway.

[mediax]

Originally Posted by crossi

What's the point? I read for the text. I want the sharpest text and the clearest pages possible. And I want to make the font the size and style that is easiest for me to read. I don't want my options locked in by the publisher which is what this would need.

Like fake page turns. Pointless waste of programming and memory space.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by crossi

What's the point? I read for the text. I want the sharpest text and the clearest pages possible. And I want to make the font the size and style that is easiest for me to read. I don't want my options locked in by the publisher which is what this would need.

That's the beauty of having a modern/capable reading device/app. The publisher does NOT "lock in your options". You have the ability to select "as published" or change it to your liking.
For those who like seeing how the publisher/creator designed the book, they could. If you get your way, all readers/apps would be limited to what you consider acceptable/desirable.
If your device doesn't allow changes to be made...get a new device. Don't limit the designer's artistic tools.

Originally Posted by crossi

Like fake page turns. Pointless waste of programming and memory space.

Some people like those page turns. It is only pointless if you don't allow the user to change it or turn it off...like the horrible margins in ibooks.