Other Fiction Johnson, Samuel: Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, v2, 23 May 2007

[Patricia]

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
First published 1759

I've added a picture and a TOC.

Those who liked Vathek may well also like Dr Johnson's 'Rasselas'. Both novels have some orientalism. To my mind, Rasselas has the most beautiful prose and a restrained melancholy.
Don't be put off by the fact that there are 49 chapters. Most of them are very short - the work is only 180 pages in the Reader's small font.

Plot summary
(taken from Wikipedia)

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, often abbreviated to Rasselas, is a novella by Samuel Johnson. He wrote the piece in January 1759 to help support his seriously ill mother, although the money he made was ultimately spent on her funeral (she had died whilst Johnson was writing).

Johnson was influenced by the vogue for exotic locations. He had translated A Voyage to Abyssinia by Jeronimo Lobo in 1735 and used it as the basis for what was described as a "philosophical romance".

While the story is thematically similar to Candide by Voltaire - both concern young men traveling in the company of honored teachers, encountering and examining human suffering in an attempt to determine the root of happiness - their root concerns are distinctly different. While Voltaire was very directly satirizing the widely-read philosophical work by Gottfried Leibniz, particularly the Theodicee, in which Leibniz asserts that the world, no matter how we may perceive it, is necessarily the "best of all possible worlds," Rasselas is an outgrowth of Johnson's struggle with depression, particularly at the time of his mother's death. The question Rasselas confronts most directly is whether or not humanity is essentially capable of attaining happiness. Writing as a devout Christian as well, Johnson makes through his characters no blanket attacks on the viability of a religious response to this question (Voltaire does so), and while the story is in places light and humorous, it is not a piece of satire.

The plot concerns Rasselas, son of the King of Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia), who leaves his home in company with his sister, Nekayah, and a philosopher, Imlac, to seek adventure. His observation of other kinds of people eventually leads to the conclusion that there is no easy path to happiness, and he returns to Abissinia along with his companions. One of the more famous quotations from this story is of the character Imlac:

"That the dead are seen no more ... I will not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence; and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears"

23 November 2009
New version uploaded.
the original was downloaded 323 times.

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To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[Patricia]

I read the book on the Sony Reader this afternoon, and something puzzles me. I did the TOC and it appears correctly at the front of the book. But if you click the TOC button several chapters are omitted (XXIV, XXXIV,XXVII, & XLII). These are all very short chapters - just a page or two.
If anyone has any idea why this might be then I'll correct it and post a better version.

[Dr. Drib]

When you move the mouse icon over the suspect chapters, do they show the same information that the chapters (the ones that do have links) have?

Also, (and you probably know this), but when you designate a chapter as a TITLE, then you don't really need page breaks -- assuming that you have them.

Also -- again, not really an answer - but check to see what might be actually selected for the link. Also, does a subhead precede a page break (assuming you have a page break at the suspect links).

Don

P.S.: I just clicked on these chapters. They're there - at least, the ones I clicked on. One chapter is in the middle of the screen. This has to do with the preceding "marker" BEFORE the chapter (which is - or SHOULD BE - designated as a TITLE.)

OR --- The chapter is NOT selected as a TITLE; hence, it doesn't appear as the beginning of a new page.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Patricia

I read the book on the Sony Reader this afternoon, and something puzzles me. I did the TOC and it appears correctly at the front of the book. But if you click the TOC button several chapters are omitted (XXIV, XXXIV,XXVII, & XLII). These are all very short chapters - just a page or two.
If anyone has any idea why this might be then I'll correct it and post a better version.

Would you mind posting the HTML0 file so I can have a look and see what the problem might be?

[Patricia]

In between marking exam papers, I've spent most of the week trying (without success) to sort this problem out.

All the book is there. But Chapter 24 starts in the middle of the page. The TOC at the front of the book is accurate. But the TOC available when you click the TOC button has several chapters missing.

I've tried deleting and replacing the TOC several times. I've tried deleting the entire heading for Chapter 24, together with the surrounding spaces and lines, so that the adjacent chapters run together. Then I added the heading for Chapter 24 and marked it as a title. None of this worked.

Finally, I tried re-making the book. I downloaded the text from Manybooks.net in rtf format. Then I loaded it into BD, which correctly identified all the chapters, except no.24, which it labelled as a subtitle. I corrected this to a title. But, when I made the book, exactly the same thing happened.

So, as JS Wolf suggested, I'm posting the htm file. If anyone can see how to fix this, I would be very grateful.

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[Hadrien]

I'll add this book on Feedbooks, it won't be a LRF, but the TOC will work...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Patricia

In between marking exam papers, I've spent most of the week trying (without success) to sort this problem out.

All the book is there. But Chapter 24 starts in the middle of the page. The TOC at the front of the book is accurate. But the TOC available when you click the TOC button has several chapters missing.

I've tried deleting and replacing the TOC several times. I've tried deleting the entire heading for Chapter 24, together with the surrounding spaces and lines, so that the adjacent chapters run together. Then I added the heading for Chapter 24 and marked it as a title. None of this worked.

Finally, I tried re-making the book. I downloaded the text from Manybooks.net in rtf format. Then I loaded it into BD, which correctly identified all the chapters, except no.24, which it labelled as a subtitle. I corrected this to a title. But, when I made the book, exactly the same thing happened.

So, as JS Wolf suggested, I'm posting the htm file. If anyone can see how to fix this, I would be very grateful.

Add a manual page break immediately before the chapter headings that aren't showing up - that should fix it.

There seems to be a minimum amount of text required between two titles in BD in order to get an automatic page break and the title appearing in the TOC.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Patricia

In between marking exam papers, I've spent most of the week trying (without success) to sort this problem out.

All the book is there. But Chapter 24 starts in the middle of the page. The TOC at the front of the book is accurate. But the TOC available when you click the TOC button has several chapters missing.

I've tried deleting and replacing the TOC several times. I've tried deleting the entire heading for Chapter 24, together with the surrounding spaces and lines, so that the adjacent chapters run together. Then I added the heading for Chapter 24 and marked it as a title. None of this worked.

Finally, I tried re-making the book. I downloaded the text from Manybooks.net in rtf format. Then I loaded it into BD, which correctly identified all the chapters, except no.24, which it labelled as a subtitle. I corrected this to a title. But, when I made the book, exactly the same thing happened.

So, as JSWolf suggested, I'm posting the html0 file. If anyone can see how to fix this, I would be very grateful.

I've fixed it up and even cleaned up the ToC so none of it wraps to the next line. I'm including the LRF and html0 file. ALl I ended up doing was adding the page breaks where needed and then I changed the ToC to a verse and then embedded a smaller fot for use with the ToC and adjusted the font settings to make it fit without being too too small. Of course it will wrap if you use M or L font sizes on your reader.

Jon

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[Patricia]

Jon,
Thanks a lot for trying. You have solved the problem of getting chapter 24 to start on a new page.

But the missing chapters on the TOC are still missing. (I don't mean the TOC at the beginning of the book, but the TOC listed below 'Bookmarks' and above 'History'. Chapter 24 is still unlisted and so are the others that I mentioned before.)

This makes me feel a lot better because it means that I'm not the only one having difficulty with this text. (I was beginning to feel very stupid.) Maybe it is the curse of Dr Johnson. Or maybe BD doesn't approve of very short chapters.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Jon,
Thanks a lot for trying. You have solved the problem of getting chapter 24 to start on a new page.

But the missing chapters on the TOC are still missing. (I don't mean the TOC at the beginning of the book, but the TOC listed below 'Bookmarks' and above 'History'. Chapter 24 is still unlisted and so are the others that I mentioned before.)

This makes me feel a lot better because it means that I'm not the only one having difficulty with this text. (I was beginning to feel very stupid.) Maybe it is the curse of Dr Johnson. Or maybe BD doesn't approve of very short chapters.

I'll have another look at it and fix that.

P.S. I think we just found a bug in Book Designer. Because when I added in more text to Chapter 23, then Chapter 24 showed up fine.

[HarryT]

I've found sometimes that there are some titles that just don't show up in the TOC. The only way to fix it seems to be to delete the title - and any blank lines above and below it - and re-type it. I suspect they are places where the XML source has become slightly "corrupted" so BD isn't recognising it properly as a title. It's happened to me a few times.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've found sometimes that there are some titles that just don't show up in the TOC. The only way to fix it seems to be to delete the title - and any blank lines above and below it - and re-type it. I suspect they are places where the XML source has become slightly "corrupted" so BD isn't recognising it properly as a title. It's happened to me a few times.

I found the problem. The problem was that I had ToC set to short on LRF generation. So it seemed to have skipped a few entries. I set it to Long and t seems to work.

So here is the new 2.1 edition complete with HTML0 code. I hope everyone enjoys this and please get the new version as it seems to be fixed now. Plus on Small the ToC in the book itself does not wrap.

Jon

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[Dr. Drib]

I look forward to reading this. Thanks Patricia.

One of the things about BD is that the styes inherited in each "paragraph" of text are often confusing. Having 4 vertical bars to designate a style is really not enough information.

What would be nice is if the user could see exactly what type of inheritance each paragraph has -- sort of like Word.

I will often have to go the the ABOVE paragraph and then hit ENTER in order to inherit that paragraph's characteristics just to create a proper space between one paragraph element and a different paragraph element.

And sometimes, for the life of me, I can't get rid of one paragraph's characteristics, no matter what I do.

Sometimes, I'll spend hours and hours trying to format a file; while at other times, it'll only take 15-20 minutes to do everything and then upload it here.

But for all this, BD is really incredible.

Just my thoughts.

Don

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I look forward to reading this. Thanks Patricia.

One of the things about BD is that the styes inherited in each "paragraph" of text are often confusing. Having 4 vertical bars to designate a style is really not enough information.

What would be nice is if the user could see exactly what type of inheritance each paragraph has -- sort of like Word.

There is a simple way in Book Designer to see what the inheritance is in each paragraph.

From the Tools menu select HTML Fragment Editor. Then go and select the paragraph you want to check. Then go back to the HTML Fragment Editor window and click refresh. You will see the code for the selected section.

P.S. if you find anything off in the formatting of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia please let me know so I can try to fix it. I think it should be ok now as Patricia did a good job with the formatting. All I did was help fix the problem with the ToC.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is a simple way in Book Designer to see what the inheritance is in each paragraph.

From the Tools menu select HTML Fragment Editor. Then go and select the paragraph you want to check. Then go back to the HTML Fragment Editor window and click refresh. You will see the code for the selected section.

P.S. if you find anything off int he formatting of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia please let me know so I can try to fix it. I think it should be ok now as Patricia did a good job with the formatting. All I did was help fix the problem with the ToC.

THANKS!!!

I'm going to check this out right now.

Don