[Next project] Veiled Women, by Marmaduke Pickthall

[Hendrik Kaiber]

Now that Waverley is finally finished, I would to start a new project, and for that I picked Veiled Women, by Marmaduke Pickthall, a not very long novel (about 75k words.) I already did some preliminary work, and it doesn't seem very difficult so far.

For the cover, I'm thinking Egyptian Woman (Coin Necklace), since the plot involves an Egyptian harem, and is set in 19th century.

Can I produce it?

Transcription

Scans

Repo

--Hendrik

[Alex Cabal]

OK, David will manage this with Emma reviewing.

On 10/13/25 5:09 AM, Hendrik Kaiber wrote:
> Now that /Waverley/ is finally finished, I would to start a new project,
> and for that I picked /Veiled Women/, by Marmaduke Pickthall, a not very

> long novel (about 75k words.) I already did some preliminary work, and
> it doesn't seem very difficult so far.
>

> For the cover, I'm thinking Egyptian Woman (Coin Necklace) <https://
> standardebooks.org/artworks/john-singer-sargent/egyptian-woman-coin-
> necklace>, since the plot involves an Egyptian harem, and is set in 19th

> century.
>
> Can I produce it?
>

> Transcription <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57297>
> Scans <https://archive.org/details/veiledwomen00pickiala/mode/2up>
> Repo <https://github.com/HendrikBK/marmaduke-pickthall_veiled-women>
>
> --Hendrik
>
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[David]

Okay! I've assigned the cover artwork in the DB; looks good to me. 

[Hendrik Kaiber]

I finished proofreading the book, and will apply some changes (mainly modernization) soon. One question: in the end of chapter 37 (page 304) there is a passage that says “Wallahi, thou art still delicious.” This makes no sense in context, and it likely should be “delirious.” Do you agree?

Other than that, there some Arabic words, some of which are spelled differently today (like harîm -> harem), but not much will be required. I should post this for review by the weekend.

--Hendrik

[David]

Hmmm.... I'm not so sure. It doesn't look like there has been any delirium (or fever, whatever) in the context. She has just admitted she's getting old and encouraged Yusuf to get another, younger wife. His response, that she is "still delicious" makes better sense as a consolatory remark (= "No, no, you're not that old!") than it does to say she is "delirious". 

Happy for other eyes to take a look at this, but my recommendation would be to leave as-is.

[Hendrik Kaiber]

I haven't considered that. I'll keep it like this then.

--Hendrik

[Hendrik Kaiber]

A few words I'm not sure should be modernized:

Gehennum -> Gehenna: They both refer to the same concept, but I'm not sure if it is an actual sound-like word.

Kurbâj -> Kurbash: Present in MW, but I'm also not sure if the sound is similar enough.

Ma sh' Allah -> Mashallah: Not present in MW, but in Wikpedia. Also, Inshallah is constructed similarly and is present in MW, and it would make things more consistent if both were modernized.

Also, two more questions, both regarding chapter 15:

There is, in page 125, a letter, which has a ℅ character, which I believe is an abbreviation for "care of", should I change it to use c. o., with appropriate semantics?

In the footer of the letter the sender is on the left side, center-aligned with the rest of the letter, with a bracket dividing them. I don't see any point in keeping any of this formatting, and think "Mary" should be before "Madame" with an added comma (editorial). What do you think?

Other than that, there quite a few words with strange spelling, but I'll change the ones I can find in MW.

--Hendrik

[Weijia Cheng]

FWIW, “Gehennum” is probably an alternative Romanization of “Jahannam,” the Islamic concept of hell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahannam

[David]

Spellings:

1. "Gehennum" - in addition to what Weijia noted, I would say "not sound-alike", so leave as-is.
2. Kurbâj -> Kurbash: this does look "sound-alike" to me, so update [Editorial].
3. Mashallah - a tricky one! My inclination would be update (it will likely be in MW soon enough), but perhaps this is one for Alex to call.

Re: ch. 15 - you can leave the `℅` character - it already appears plenty of times in the corpus, and is automatically handled for compatible epubs.

About the letter footer - I recall handling something like this in a Fletcher title - check Talleyrand Maxim / ch. 2, and its markup - the CSS uses a fall-back, so you'll need that from its local.css as well, if you're inclined to keep it. On the other hand, it doesn't add much: if you don't retain, I'd keep "Mary" on its own line, and the rest beneath it.