[New Project] Privy Seal by Ford Madox Ford

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Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 6, 2026, 9:58:43 AM (8 days ago) Feb 6
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Hi,

I'd like to get started with Privy Seal by Ford Madox Ford.

This is my first go at creating a Standard Ebook though I've reviewed the process and am comfortable with it.

Regards, Stephen

Alex Cabal

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Feb 6, 2026, 10:24:26 AM (8 days ago) Feb 6
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Great, that one would be a good start.

This book has an epigraph and dedication so you'll have to add a half
title page. See the manual for that.

The book is in parts, see the manual for structuring those, especially
the `data-parent` attribute.

It's also in British-style quotation, so you'll have to run `se
british2american`. This script makes a lot of mistakes so you'll have to
carefully proofread to make sure that quotes are all curled correctly.

Also remember to include the series metadata. This book is part of the
Fifth Queen series.

Make sure to read the Standard Ebooks Manual of Style before starting,
as you won't know what to fix if you haven't read the standards. In
particular, please closely review the semantics, high level patterns,
and typography sections:

https://standardebooks.org/manual

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/4-semantics

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/7-high-level-structural-patterns

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/8-typography

The step by step guide will take you from start to finish. Please follow
it exactly:

https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step

This page on common issues in older books may be useful:

https://standardebooks.org/contribute/how-tos/common-issues-when-working-on-public-domain-ebooks

Please email often if you have any questions at all. Our standards are
well-established so there is probably already a standard for formatting
whatever problem you've encountered.

When you're ready, email back with a link to your Github repository so
that I can assign you a manager and reviewer.

Have fun! :)


On 2/5/26 11:48 PM, Stephen Fenwick wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to get started with Privy Seal by Ford Madox Ford.
> The Project Gutenberg eBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford <https://
> www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26698/pg26698-images.html>
> Privy seal: his last venture : Ford, Ford Madox, 1873-1939 : Free
> Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive <https://archive.org/
> details/privysealhislast00fordrich/mode/2up>
>
> This is my first go at creating a Standard Ebook though I've reviewed
> the process and am comfortable with it.
>
> Regards, Stephen
>
> --
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Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 7, 2026, 12:48:06 AM (7 days ago) Feb 7
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I've created a repo here:  spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal

I've done my best to follow the guidelines but some things I'm not sure about are:
 - Whether the frontmatter is correct (especially epigraph, hafltitle, dedication).
 - Metadata in general (this looks quite complex and I've probably missed some things).
 - The Gutenberg source had print page numbers marked. I've stripped these out completely as print page numbers don't seem to be part of the style guide. That's a separate commit so I can reverse it if a different approach is better.

The text seems to be in pretty good shape though I haven't read it all in detail yet.

Pointers to next steps or anything that needs to be fixed are welcome.

Alex Cabal

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Feb 7, 2026, 6:06:57 AM (7 days ago) Feb 7
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Ok, Weijia will manage with Robin reviewing.

Weijia Cheng

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Feb 7, 2026, 7:04:34 AM (7 days ago) Feb 7
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The dedication can use some custom styling to match the printed style. Take a look at The Luzumiyat for something similar-looking.
The epigraph is verse. See https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.6/7-high-level-structural-patterns#7.5. Also, make sure that the quotation marks are correct.
<dc:source> for the IA scans are wrong (should be https://archive.org/details/privysealhislast00fordrich)
Most of the metadata is not filled out yet so there is not much to comment on. I assume that you haven't gotten to that step in the guide yet.
Removing page numbers is correct.

Vince

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Feb 7, 2026, 11:34:35 AM (6 days ago) Feb 7
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Now that he has the repo URL, Alex will assign you a manager, so I didn’t look very closely, but while you’re waiting…

Did you check all the various “fix quotes” commits against the scans? A number of them look like they were the result of british2american, and if so, they are not editorial (just as british2american itself wasn’t editorial). If there is a mixture of fixes because of that and true editorial mistakes in a single commit, then you will need to separate them into two commits; as the big yellow box at the beginning of the Step by Step says, editorial and non-editorial changes can’t be mixed in the same commit.

I would suggest dropping the `<i> to <em>` commit. Most of what I saw was changing non-English language phrases to <em> (emphasis), which is incorrect. You do have some words/phrases that should be emphasis, but they are a small percentage of that commit, so it’s easier to drop the commit and then redo just the ones that should be emphasis. I would suggest reading section 8.2 in SEMoS enough times that you dream about it in your sleep. :) It is easily the section of the manual I use most often in my productions; I’ve probably read it 50 times (I wish that was an exaggeration), and I still have to refer to it on a regular basis.

See SEMoS 7.5 for poetry formatting; your “fix poem styling” does not match it. <p>’s should be on a separate line, and there should no text outside the spans.

I didn’t look at anything else, but your manager will once they’re assigned.

Vince

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Feb 7, 2026, 12:06:00 PM (6 days ago) Feb 7
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So sorry—I sent this last night before Weijia was assigned, and we lost power literally as I was sending it. It must have been stuck in the ether until the power came back. Nothing to see here, move along, move along…

Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 7, 2026, 6:09:21 PM (6 days ago) Feb 7
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I've changed:
 - Added styling to dedication. Question: I want to increase the font size to be consistent with the scan, but now se lint is reporting "Illegal style attribute". Is there a better way to increase font size?
 - Formatted epigraph as verse
 - Fixed formatting of verse in chapter-3-2
 - Fixed URL for <dc:source>
 - Added language tags to <i> where appropriate
 - Converted <i> to <em> where appropriate
 - Added (I think) all metadata except for long description, production notes and cover.

Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 7, 2026, 6:21:30 PM (6 days ago) Feb 7
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Please ignore that question about the dedication styling. I found the appropriate styling in local.css of the book you referenced and have copied that.

Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 9, 2026, 2:30:33 PM (4 days ago) Feb 9
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I’m proposing to use this image for the cover https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074.
Please let me know if that’s acceptable

Weijia Cheng

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Feb 9, 2026, 6:56:29 PM (4 days ago) Feb 9
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Looks good to me. I added it to the database.

Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 10, 2026, 2:05:03 AM (4 days ago) Feb 10
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I think everything is complete now and the book is ready for review.

Robin Whittleton

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Feb 10, 2026, 2:33:40 AM (4 days ago) Feb 10
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OK, will look at this today.

-Robin

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Robin Whittleton

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Feb 10, 2026, 10:39:58 AM (4 days ago) Feb 10
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OK, mostly in good shape (great shape for a first production 🙂) but I’ve noted a few things to fix at https://github.com/spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal/issues/1. The scariest is a rebase to amend a commit message. Are you comfortable with rebasing history? In this case it’s just the message that needs changing.

-Robin

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Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 10, 2026, 11:13:01 PM (3 days ago) Feb 10
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I've made those corrections.

I've expanded the longdesc - hopefully it's better now but let me know if it still needs work.

Thanks for tweaking the cover. I agree it looks better without the paint specs.

Two questions:
1) I've adopted a policy of keeping archaic spellings (eg shew) while accepting  modernize-spelling's recommendations on compound and hyphenated words (e.g. to-morrow). Is this reasonable? It's subjective but archaic spellings feel to me like part of the character of the work, while compound and hyphenated words just feel like a distraction. I think this is consistent with the first book of the series. I also found the original scan has a mixture of "shew" and "show". I'm presuming that's intentional though I'm not familiar with the intricacies of archaic spelling - so I've tried to follow the original.
2) The epub looks fine, but when I build a kepub and view it on a Kobo some sections come out as left aligned rather than centred which is ugly (dedication, 2nd line of halftitle page, 2nd line of part headings, colophon). Is that a problem with the CSS? I don't think I've made any CSS changes that might have caused that.

Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 10, 2026, 11:15:23 PM (3 days ago) Feb 10
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One other thing - in the list of corrections you mentioned the book being published in 1917, but by my research it's 1907 so I've gone with that.

Robin Whittleton

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Feb 11, 2026, 7:01:31 AM (3 days ago) Feb 11
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On the spellings we wouldn’t normally do that, unless we’re talking about hyphenation in poetry where we’re definitely more careful. But we had the same discussion with The Fifth Queen and decided like you said that it was part of the flavour of the book. If we did it there we should definitely do the same in the sequel, and you’ve copied over the same production note so all good.

Not sure what the Kobo problem might be. Have you forced it into left-justify mode? You definitely copied the kepub and not the normal epub (which uses a different renderer)?

The only further change I’d ask is that the current longdesc has “intrigues of the court of.” which I assume is missing a word. Can you fix?

-Robin

Alex Cabal

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Feb 11, 2026, 11:32:01 AM (2 days ago) Feb 11
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Wrong text alignment is almost certainly because the user has forced
left alignment instead of publisher default

On 2/11/26 7:00 AM, Robin Whittleton wrote:
> On the spellings we wouldn’t normally do that, unless we’re talking
> about hyphenation in poetry where we’re definitely more careful. But we
> had the same discussion with /The Fifth Queen/ and decided like you said
>> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal/issues/1 <https://github.com/
>> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal/issues/1>. The scariest is a
>> rebase to amend a commit message. Are you comfortable with
>> rebasing history? In this case it’s just the message that needs
>> changing.
>>
>> -Robin
>>
>>> On 10 Feb 2026, at 08:05, Stephen Fenwick <spfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I think everything is complete now and the book is ready for review.
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 12:56:29 PM UTC+13
>>> weij...@bu.edu <http://bu.edu/>wrote:
>>>
>>> Looks good to me. I added it to the database.
>>>
>>> On Monday, February 9, 2026 at 2:30:33 PM
>>> UTC-5spfe...@gmail.comwrote:
>>>
>>> I’m proposing to use this image for the cover https://
>>> www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074 <https://
>>> www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074>.
>>> Please let me know if that’s acceptable
>>> On Sunday, February 8, 2026 at 12:21:30 PM UTC+13 Stephen
>>> Fenwick wrote:
>>>
>>> Please ignore that question about the dedication
>>> styling. I found the appropriate styling in local.css
>>> of the book you referenced and have copied that.
>>> On Sunday, February 8, 2026 at 12:09:21 PM UTC+13
>>> Stephen Fenwick wrote:
>>>
>>> I've changed:
>>>  - Added styling to dedication.*Question*: I want
>>> to increase the font size to be consistent with
>>> the scan, but now se lint is reporting "Illegal
>>> style attribute". Is there a better way to
>>> increase font size?
>>>  - Formatted epigraph as verse
>>>  - Fixed formatting of verse in chapter-3-2
>>>  - Fixed URL for <dc:source>
>>>  - Added language tags to <i> where appropriate
>>>  - Converted <i> to <em> where appropriate
>>>  - Added (I think) all metadata except for long
>>> description, production notes and cover.
>>>
>>> On Sunday, February 8, 2026 at 6:06:00 AM UTC+13
>>> Vince wrote:
>>>
>>> So sorry—I sent this last night before Weijia
>>> was assigned, and we lost power literally as
>>> I was sending it. It must have been stuck in
>>> the ether until the power came back. Nothing
>>> to see here, move along, move along…
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Feb 7, 2026, at 10:34 AM, Vince
>>>> <vr_se...@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Now that he has the repo URL, Alex will
>>>> assign you a manager, so I didn’t look very
>>>> closely, but while you’re waiting…
>>>>
>>>> Did you check/all/ the various “fix quotes”
>>>>> madox-ford_privy-seal <https://github.com/
>>>>> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal>
>>>>>
>>>>> I've done my best to follow the guidelines
>>>>> but some things I'm not sure about are:
>>>>>  - Whether the frontmatter is correct
>>>>> (especially epigraph, hafltitle, dedication).
>>>>>  - Metadata in general (this looks quite
>>>>> complex and I've probably missed some things).
>>>>>  - The Gutenberg source had print page
>>>>> numbers marked. I've stripped these out
>>>>> completely as print page numbers don't seem
>>>>> to be part of the style guide. That's a
>>>>> separate commit so I can reverse it if a
>>>>> different approach is better.
>>>>>
>>>>> The text seems to be in pretty good shape
>>>>> though I haven't read it all in detail yet.
>>>>>
>>>>> Pointers to next steps or anything that
>>>>> needs to be fixed are welcome.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
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Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 11, 2026, 5:54:58 PM (2 days ago) Feb 11
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I've made that change to longdesc, as well as changing the name of the series to "The Fifth Queen" instead of "Fifth Queen".

Kobo gives 3 options for alignment: none (presumably that's publisher default), left and justified. The first gives correct formatting for the pages I mentioned, while the others mess them up.

However choosing "none" also means the main text is left aligned, which suggests the default for the kepub version of this book is left aligned. Is there a way to change that?

Alex Cabal

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Feb 11, 2026, 10:04:04 PM (2 days ago) Feb 11
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Unfortunately not without editing the ebook. Consider how the renderer
is thinking: It has some default text align if none is defined (like in
our stylesheet). In Kobo that default is "left". If you force a text
align via the interface, it must apply some CSS like `*{ text-align:
justified !important; }`. This, on purpose, overrides any text align the
ebook has defined. What else can possibly occur in this case?
> <https://github.com/>
> >> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal/issues/1 <https://
> github.com/ <https://github.com/>
> >> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal/issues/1>. The scariest is a
> >> rebase to amend a commit message. Are you comfortable with
> >> rebasing history? In this case it’s just the message that needs
> >> changing.
> >>
> >> -Robin
> >>
> >>> On 10 Feb 2026, at 08:05, Stephen Fenwick <spfe...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I think everything is complete now and the book is ready for
> review.
> >>>
> >>> On Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 12:56:29 PM UTC+13
> >>> weij...@bu.edu <http://bu.edu/ <http://bu.edu/>>wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Looks good to me. I added it to the database.
> >>>
> >>> On Monday, February 9, 2026 at 2:30:33 PM
> >>> UTC-5spfe...@gmail.comwrote:
> >>>
> >>> I’m proposing to use this image for the cover https://
> >>> www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074 <http://
> www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074> <https://
> >>> www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074 <http://
> >>>>> madox-ford_privy-seal <https://github.com/ <https://github.com/>
> >>>>> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I've done my best to follow the guidelines
> >>>>> but some things I'm not sure about are:
> >>>>>  - Whether the frontmatter is correct
> >>>>> (especially epigraph, hafltitle, dedication).
> >>>>>  - Metadata in general (this looks quite
> >>>>> complex and I've probably missed some things).
> >>>>>  - The Gutenberg source had print page
> >>>>> numbers marked. I've stripped these out
> >>>>> completely as print page numbers don't seem
> >>>>> to be part of the style guide. That's a
> >>>>> separate commit so I can reverse it if a
> >>>>> different approach is better.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The text seems to be in pretty good shape
> >>>>> though I haven't read it all in detail yet.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Pointers to next steps or anything that
> >>>>> needs to be fixed are welcome.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the
> >>> Google Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> >>> send an email tostandardebook...@googlegroups.com.
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> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <http://40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.
> >>
> >>
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Robin Whittleton

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Feb 12, 2026, 1:45:28 AM (yesterday) Feb 12
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All looks good now, over to you Alex.

-Robin

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Alex Cabal

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Feb 12, 2026, 2:18:28 PM (yesterday) Feb 12
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Looks very good Stephen, great work, thanks! I've gone ahead and
released it.

A person making an earlier attempt at this book suggested a portrait of
Thomas Cromwell. I don't think we were able to find PD proof of that
portrait at that time. But maybe it could be found now? I think that
potrait would be perfect for this book.

If you'd like to work on something more advanced next, check our Wanted
Ebooks list for moderate difficulty productions:
https://standardebooks.org/contribute/wanted-ebooks

Or, pitch something else that might interest you to the mailing list.

Thanks!
>>>    <https://github.com/ <https://github.com/>>
>>>     >> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal/issues/1 <https://
>>> github.com/ <http://github.com/><https://github.com/ <https://
>>> github.com/>>
>>>     >> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal/issues/1>. The scariest is a
>>>     >> rebase to amend a commit message. Are you comfortable with
>>>     >> rebasing history? In this case it’s just the message that needs
>>>     >> changing.
>>>     >>
>>>     >> -Robin
>>>     >>
>>>     >>> On 10 Feb 2026, at 08:05, Stephen Fenwick <spfe...@gmail.com
>>> <http://gmail.com/>>
>>>    wrote:
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> I think everything is complete now and the book is ready for
>>>    review.
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> On Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 12:56:29 PM UTC+13
>>>     >>> weij...@bu.edu <http://bu.edu/><http://bu.edu/ <http://
>>> bu.edu/><http://bu.edu/ <http://bu.edu/>>>wrote:
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> Looks good to me. I added it to the database.
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> On Monday, February 9, 2026 at 2:30:33 PM
>>>     >>> UTC-5spfe...@gmail.comwrote:
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> I’m proposing to use this image for the cover https://
>>>     >>>www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074 <http://
>>> www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074><http://
>>> www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459074><http://
>>>     >>>>> Fenwick <spfe...@gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>> wrote:
>>>     >>>>>
>>>     >>>>> I've created a repo here: spfenwick/ford-
>>>     >>>>> madox-ford_privy-seal <https://github.com/ <https://
>>> github.com/><https://github.com/ <https://github.com/>>
>>>     >>>>> spfenwick/ford-madox-ford_privy-seal>
>>>     >>>>>
>>>     >>>>> I've done my best to follow the guidelines
>>>     >>>>> but some things I'm not sure about are:
>>>     >>>>>  - Whether the frontmatter is correct
>>>     >>>>> (especially epigraph, hafltitle, dedication).
>>>     >>>>>  - Metadata in general (this looks quite
>>>     >>>>> complex and I've probably missed some things).
>>>     >>>>>  - The Gutenberg source had print page
>>>     >>>>> numbers marked. I've stripped these out
>>>     >>>>> completely as print page numbers don't seem
>>>     >>>>> to be part of the style guide. That's a
>>>     >>>>> separate commit so I can reverse it if a
>>>     >>>>> different approach is better.
>>>     >>>>>
>>>     >>>>> The text seems to be in pretty good shape
>>>     >>>>> though I haven't read it all in detail yet.
>>>     >>>>>
>>>     >>>>> Pointers to next steps or anything that
>>>     >>>>> needs to be fixed are welcome.
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>>
>>>     >>> --
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>>> <http://40reala.net/>
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>>> d/msgid/standardebooks/>>
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Stephen Fenwick

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Feb 12, 2026, 2:30:14 PM (yesterday) Feb 12
to Standard Ebooks
I did have a look for Thomas Cromwell portraits but couldn't find anything in PD.

I also started looking at Portrait of a Young Woman before realising it had been used by the first book of the series.

My rationale for going with this image was that Thomas Cromwell is one of several men who are key to the plot, while the overall focus of the series is on Katherine Howard. So rather than putting the focus on Thomas Cromwell, more of an "anonymous Tudor man" image seems to fit. Then the final book of the series would have a queen being crowned (or similar).

In terms of my next production, see my new thread on Varieties of Religious Experience. I suspect it's probably more complex than recommended for a second production, but I've been investigating what's involved and am confident it's do-able.

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