e-Book Requests and Begging (Public Domain Books Only!)

[pstjmack]

Frederick Rolfe's "Hadrian the Seventh" - how come this doesn't seem to be available as a Public Domain ebook? It was published in 1904 and the author died in 1913, so I can't see any impediment.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by pstjmack

Frederick Rolfe's "Hadrian the Seventh" - how come this doesn't seem to be available as a Public Domain ebook? It was published in 1904 and the author died in 1913, so I can't see any impediment.

Apparently, no one has gotten around to making an eBook of it. Doing so is a volunteer effort, and someone must be motivated to do it.

Full page scans are available on Hathi Trust if anyone wants to have a go, but if you aren't affiliated with an institution that supports Hathi, getting them will be tedious. Hathi subscribers can download PDFs. Others will need to do screen captures. See https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?...view=1up;seq=1
______
Dennis

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Others will need to do screen captures.

... or use the Hathi Download Helper ...

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Interne...d-Helper.shtml

Works like a charm, especially if you "enable AutoProxy" in the download menu.

[doubleshuffle]

Frederick Rolfe sounds interesting, actually. I have to finish a bigger project first, but after that I'd do the Hadrian. However, if someone else did it I wouldn't mind. Just say so here, please, to avoid unnecessary work.

[pstjmack]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Frederick Rolfe sounds interesting, actually. I have to finish a bigger project first, but after that I'd do the Hadrian. However, if someone else did it I wouldn't mind. Just say so here, please, to avoid unnecessary work.

doubleshuffle, you'd be doing a great service with this. Sadly I've no access to Hathi and no experience in creating these either. But Tartarus Press's upcoming reprint of A.J.A. Symons's "The Quest for Corvo" is some indication of how much interest a public domain ebook of "Hadrian the Seventh" is likely to get...

http://www.tartaruspress.com/symons-...for-corvo.html

[doubleshuffle]

I'm just downloading from Hathi and having a look at the book there. Doing this will be no picnic, since there are many passages in Greek, Latin, German in the first few pages already, which will mean a lot of work going through the OCR. But the guy is fascinating. Consider me hooked.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by Frederick Rolfe

"Zmnts* wishes to ask you a few questions," the young bishop began [...]


________
* This onomatopoiia presents the English Catholic pronunciation of "His Eminency."

Hilarious. I'm going to enjoy this.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

I'm just downloading from Hathi and having a look at the book there. Doing this will be no picnic, since there are many passages in Greek, Latin, German in the first few pages already, which will mean a lot of work going through the OCR. But the guy is fascinating. Consider me hooked.

One thing is Google has a Latin translator available if you want to have some English translations. I have used it to have a Latin paragraph followed by the English translation.

Dale

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

One thing is Google has a Latin translator available if you want to have some English translations. I have used it to have a Latin paragraph followed by the English translation.

Dale

Thanks for the hint. I'm not sure if I'll translate all the foreign language stuff, but this might come in handy. What I really hate is Greek. Picking out all the unicode characters is so tedious...

[dwig]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Thanks for the hint. I'm not sure if I'll translate all the foreign language stuff, but this might come in handy. What I really hate is Greek. Picking out all the unicode characters is so tedious...

If you use Windows, you might give Microsoft's Translator a try. It supports a wide range of languages, and can work with your computer's camera to do a form of OCR & Translate on-the-fly. I believe the Google app will do the same on Android.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Thanks for the hint. I'm not sure if I'll translate all the foreign language stuff, but this might come in handy. What I really hate is Greek. Picking out all the unicode characters is so tedious...

I hear you. Most of the translators do Greek and other modern languages. I believe there is OCR that can do greek and pick the unicode characters for you.

Dale

[GrannyGrump]

@dwig --- apparently the MS Translator only works on Windows 10, and refuses to let me download on my Win7 machine to install to a different computer.

I detest -- despise --- LOATHE ENTIRELY --- the "apps store" protocol that insists on being Mummy and Daddy and all the other parental enforcers...

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

@dwig --- apparently the MS Translator only works on Windows 10, and refuses to let me download on my Win7 machine to install to a different computer.

I detest -- despise --- LOATHE ENTIRELY --- the "apps store" protocol that insists on being Mummy and Daddy and all the other parental enforcers...

Oh, I feel you. In this case though, since I've only got Windows 7, I don't need to bother.

Thanks for the tip, dwig, btw.

And @DaleDe: I've never even checked if ABBYY can pick up the Greek along with the English... If that is really possible I'll give myself a dozen of these:

[pstjmack]

I guess all this answers my original question of how come this doesn't seem to be available as a Public Domain ebook. Thanks all for your endeavours!

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by pstjmack

I guess all this answers my original question of how come this doesn't seem to be available as a Public Domain ebook. Thanks all for your endeavours!

Well, all the above is pretty standard fare for working from a scan. What makes this one particularly tedious is that the geniuses who prepared the scan have slapped their "Digitized by Genius. Original from the University of Idiocy" line over the last one or two lines of text on every friggin' page, so that I basically have to type those in by hand because the OCR can't pick them up. Add vertical shadows next to the text on many pages, which the OCR interprets as "I"s and other interesting things, and preparing this as an e-text means reading the whole book on-screen, epub and pdf side by side.

Which wouldn't be a problem if I still found it as exciting towards the middle as at the beginning, but the way the protagonist is presented as the only person in the world who has a clue, and all the others as bigoted idiots, is getting less and less funny by the page. (No wonder the book appealed to D.H. Lawrence...) Long story short: Given that there is an ebook version available for three euros, which, from having a look at the preview in the Kobo store, looks very clean and well-made, I guess I am about to give up. Sorry.

http://www.valancourtbooks.com/hadri...enth-1904.html

There's a recent Penguin edition as well, also available as an ebook:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/3062...n-the-seventh/