Six new public domain books, and what proofing caught in each.
One title goes live at a time, and only after our editor has read every line against a scanned early edition. Below are the last six, newest first, with the date each opened to readers and the errors the proofing pass found in the files other sites still serve.
Go-live dates and proofing findings
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Newest1918 text · 81,000 words
My Ántonia
Proofed against the 1918 Houghton Mifflin first edition. We added a short description of each of W. T. Benda's eight drawings at the point it was printed, since the images themselves are not reproduced here. Suits readers who liked the frontier half of Moby-Dick and wanted it on dry land.
What proofing foundAccented names had been flattened in the common free file: Ántonia, Shimerda's Bohemian words, Ambroš. Forty-one restored. The finder still matches “Antonia” without the accent. -
Before that1917 translation · 60,000 words
The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Garnett's volume, the third in her Chekhov series, is in the US public domain. This is where to read Chekhov short stories online in a text that matches what English readers held in 1917, with a note on where her smoothing departs from the Russian.
What proofing foundA block of two paragraphs in “Ionitch” had been duplicated in the source file we started from. Removed, and checked against the printed page. -
Earlier1897 text · 160,000 words
Dracula
Every letter, diary entry and cutting is indexed by date, so a reader can start on 3 May and follow the novel through the year. The longest proofing pass since Middlemarch: seven weeks.
What proofing foundFour entry headings carried the wrong day, most likely typed from memory by whoever made the first transcription. Corrected to the 1897 Constable printing. -
Earlier1906 text · 25 stories
The Four Million
Twenty-five New York stories, each timed on its own. “The Gift of the Magi” takes nine minutes. Good for a group that wants something short to argue about in one evening.
What proofing foundDialect spellings had been “corrected” in places by a later editor. We put O. Henry's own spellings back, 27 of them. -
Earlier1914 text · 15 stories
Dubliners
If you searched for Dubliners James Joyce read online, this is the 1914 Grant Richards text, not a later corrected edition. Start with “Araby”. It takes eleven minutes.
What proofing foundJoyce's opening dashes for speech had been converted to quotation marks throughout. We restored the dashes, which also brought back two paragraph breaks that the conversion had merged. -
Earlier1871–72 text · 316,000 words
Middlemarch
Eleven weeks of proofing, the longest we have done. It launched with the chapter planner that splits eight books into sittings of about forty minutes.
What proofing foundThe chapter epigraphs had lost their italics and their attributions in most free copies. All 86 restored and set apart from the chapter text.
One book at a time, never a batch
A site could put a thousand public domain books online in an afternoon. The files are sitting there. They are also full of the errors listed above, and nobody has read them against the page since they were scanned.
Our editor reads the whole text beside the scan. Four weeks for a short novel. Eleven for Middlemarch. Nothing goes live half-checked, and nothing is released early because a date looked good.
Once a title is live the work does not stop. Readers write in, we check the report against the edition within seven days, and the fix goes into that book's correction ledger with its date. The text accuracy guarantee sets out exactly how.
Want a new title for next season?
Any of these six can go out as a printed book club reading pack or a large-print set. Tell us how many readers and when you meet, and we reply with a written quote.